Next up, we have Christian Easterday, Managing Director and CEO of Hot Chili Limited. Mr. Easterday is a highly experienced geologist and mineral economist with more than 25 years of experience in the global mining, exploration, and minerals industry. He has held senior leadership positions in exploration management and roles at producers such as Placer Dome, Hill 50 Gold, and Harmony Gold. Mr. Easterday is the Founding Managing Director of Hot Chili and has served as Managing Director since its listing on the ASX in 2010.
Well, thank you. Hopefully the microphone's working. It's been a while since Hot Chili has been at Diggers & Dealers. Today I'm giving an update on a project which has taken over a decade to position where we are now. Just listening to the presentation from the Solstice guys, it really reminded me as to where we've come from. I founded this company in 2008. We listed in 2010. We had our first discovery on the coastline in Chile in the copper gold space, that allowed us to, in 2012, win the Emerging Company of the Year award at Diggers & Dealers. It was a project called Productora. It was a very exciting phase of exploration as our peer Solstice is going through, and it eventually made it to about a quarter of a billion tonnes, at a very similar grade with similar intercepts.
It's an exciting phase, the exploration phase, but that is very much part of our journey. I was joking with a colleague on the floor that about four or five years ago, when the copper industry came through a major down cycle and started moving towards this new copper cycle, which we are well and truly starting to accelerate into, that Hot Chili could very much be the winner of the mining industry's Bradbury Award. At that time, we were one of only a couple of copper developers and explorers that made it to the other side of that chasm.
Probably now in the coming couple of years, with Hot Chili really, really focusing on its execution phase now, to bring this to reality, to bring this company as the next Oz Minerals of the Australian market, we may well be in line for the Diggers & Dealers or Dealers or Diggers Award in the coming few years. This has been a Herculean effort by our group. It's underpinned by a group of people that have held together for 16 years and shared a vision, to put a new mid-tier player into the copper space. Something the Australian market hasn't had for a long time since we lost Oz Minerals to our even bigger brother in the major space with BHP Billiton. Since we lost Mount Isa Mines to Glencore.
We now have really only one producer of substance, that is truly Australian made in Sandfire, not presenting this year. We feel a lot of pride in what Hot Chili has been able to achieve. Moving from a first discovery at a quarter of a billion tonnes in the last cycle to now a 1.5 billion ton coastal production hub, sporting a top five scale in the independent copper development space and recording our third major discovery, which is pushing us towards a 30-year project at a production base which is now exceeding the annual metal production of Oz Minerals. It gives you a feeling as to what we've been doing at Hot Chili and why. Moving into this copper cycle, people said a few years ago, "Wow, it would be great if we saw copper prices at $4." A year ago, $5.
Six months ago, $6. Now we're talking $7 and $8. Copper has rapidly overtaken iron ore as the number one metal market by value in the world, and it's happened quickly. What we were talking about months ago is now occurring, and that leverage and that scale equation, which served Andrew Forrest very well at the beginning of the iron ore cycle, is now positioning Hot Chili for extreme leverage in what we're about to do. I'd like to just bring you up to speed with Hot Chili. It's been probably five years since we presented. We have a company that is positioned around AUD 300 million-AUD 400 million a month ago. Bit of an equity pullback, position in the S&P covered by ETFs. Glencore is one of our large shareholders.
A growing institutional presence from our beachhead and our TSXV listing over in Canada and positioning the company into the large copper space. That is not an Australian thing, but by the presentations we're seeing at Diggers & Dealers and the numerous explorers that are popping up because of the copper price and its incentive to get out there and start drilling. My message to the Australian explorers is probably similar to the message given by Agnico's CEO, keep drilling. These things are born over decades. The average timeframe to bring a meaningful scale copper producer is not getting shorter. It's out at about 21 years at the moment. That's a bit different to the gold space here and the timelines of the Australian market and their expectations around a different metal.
These projects, such as the one we're building, these are things that put out $1 billion to $2 billion of revenue annually for multi-decades. These are the projects which will now become the companies that are made similar to what you saw in iron ore in the last 20- 30 years. It's my prediction that the next 20- 30 years will be the age of copper. What we've done is starting to attract interest. We're seeing equity valuations moving. We're seeing P/NAV valuations moving. We're on the coastline, 600 km north of Santiago, on the Pan-American, next to port, down at low elevation. We're seeing a lot of flattery with very, very big name mining groups and financial groups starting to even pick off the small pieces that Costa Fuego hadn't cleaned up. Those market valuations are rerating for Hot Chili and our peer group.
Most of that peer group lies over in the TSXV. There are very few peers of Hot Chili left on the ASX in the independent space. We are also seeing the P/NAV transaction space moving. You would have seen the removal of Rex Minerals, the removal of New World Resources, Xanadu Mines. There are literally very few left on my hand to explain who is left. To be in our position, to be positioned with a top five project at this time, it gives me great pleasure to give you an update on all things Hot Chili today. We will start with a great discovery called La Verde. Again, coming back to where we are and location, most people know that Hot Chili's story has always been about that elevation advantage against our North American peers. We are in the Andes.
This is where 62% of the world's copper comes from. Nearly all of that comes from porphyry style. These are bulk tonnage deposits. Similar to the iron ore industry, this is a scale business. As the Australian industry found out, this is not a grade game in copper. There was one, DeGrussa. There has not been another. Even Sandfire Resources had to mobilize overseas to try and find that grade profile, small tonnage exposure in the copper sector. We are down at low elevation. We are next to infrastructure. We have spent over 10 years putting all of our permitting in place to be able to submit our environmental impact assessment in the early stages of next year. More importantly, we have some new neighbors next to us, but they are up at about 4,500 m in BHP. They have now joint ventured with the Vicuña.
That 10 year of infrastructure, securing those permits, importantly water for this region, now becomes very, very strategically important for Hot Chili. Looking quickly at a discovery and a discovery that is really shooting the lights out, putting out numerous world-class intercepts. It is in its infancy. We secured it about two years ago, very similar to what we did with the entire consolidation of Costa Fuego. These deals have taken us years to get our hands on, to get the opportunity to consolidate these areas for the first time, and then to apply fantastic science with our world-class exploration and resource development team. This is moving rapidly now. This is a deposit that started with a phase I drilling program and multiple near surface hits that started putting out 700 m- 500 m wide intercepts, all sporting very wide results like Solstice Minerals' 1% wide zones over 60 m.
When these things eventually make it to resource, all of those grades wash into about 0.5% Deposits. What we like about La Verde is La Verde is showing us the signs that we potentially, after all of these years, secured a high-grade starter pit for Costa Fuego, which will feature in our front end. We have three rigs on the ground. We have a fourth rig coming. This is being integrated and accelerated very rapidly to impact Hot Chili's resource base, its mine plan, and restate our economics on Costa Fuego. A lot of drilling done, a very big footprint. We have not started pushing extensions. We found a high-grade core straight off the bat, and a lot of the drilling has just been extending that very, very large footprint now all the way through to surface.
That high-grade starter pit now is just stacking up multiple intercepts over wide widths, 10 m-20 m from surface, 0.75%- 0.8% bulk grade. That is about 20%-30% higher than the front end of Costa Fuego into the pre-feasibility we put out 15 months ago. When you are talking about a project that can generate $1 billion, $1.2 billion long-term, a 30% free boost does dramatic things to paybacks and economics. You can see the kind of widths that we are looking at on La Verde. The pits are diving deep on it, and we are already in the midst of defining what that high-grade starter pit will look like and how many upfront early years of good revenue production we can throw into Costa Fuego. What will this do to us?
Within the pecking order of large, independent, undeveloped copper resources in the world, we are around 10th on that list. We will move to about fifth or sixth. We have a substantial amount of measured and indicated resources, about 85% measured and indicated so far. That will be taking a leap to about 5 million tons of contained fine copper and over 5 million ounces of gold. To put that into context from an Australian perspective, it is a little bit bigger than the gray in terms of payable metal. The hub will be very much a centralized approach. This is feeding off of a pre-feasibility 15 months ago that is about to be reset. 20-30 year mine life, 100,000 tons-150,000 tons per annum of fine copper equivalent metal production, with about 85% of that being copper.
This is positioned for first production in 2031 with an EIA to be submitted in Q2 of next year. When you are able to take advantage of all of those infrastructure advantages down on the coastline, when you are able to put a high grade starter pit into this, and you are able to push out that mine life another 10 years, what you are talking about is something moving from about a 120,000 tons to around a 135,000 tons, 140,000 tons project. Four and a half year paybacks pushing down to two and a half, and doubling of NPVs and IRRs. That is a project that is positioned very well in the pipeline of undeveloped major copper assets. It is bottom quartile in capital intensity. It is top quartile on production capacity.
It is going to additionally be very leveraged to the long-term copper price and gold price, each of those substantially higher than the numbers we put out on this project some 15 months ago, and giving us almost $700 million U.S. free kicks on NPV. Leverage will increase. We are likely to become the most leveraged, meaningful copper developer in the world. When we say meaningful, we look at a cut that says if you are not 50,000 tons of copper a year, you are probably not meaningful to where this cycle is going. There is very little supply coming. These projects take multiple decades to position. What that means is that when you have an 18-year head start, you become the company that everyone is focused on execution and new major supply.
Our elevation advantage has given us a clear advantage over our project peers, even such as the capital intensities you are seeing with BHP in Vicuña, double the capital intensities that you get when you are down on the coastline. Obviously being one of the few remaining meaningful copper developers in the world with a low operating cost, we are looking to push that down further with that great advantage coming from La Verde. Social integration has been everything for Hot Chili. This is over 10 years of community programs to be positioned as really a priority status project that the Chilean government has given this. Our integration of water supply, very unique in the Hot Chili story. I will not be talking about it greatly today, but it is a strategic asset that has a 10-year first-mover advantage. We have the only water license in the entire Huasco region.
When you are sitting in a region that has the largest cluster of undeveloped major copper projects in one spot, there is only one maritime license and it is owned by Hot Chili, that is a hell of an advantage and something the company is looking to position to monetize and effectively fund the equity side of this major copper development. The next two and a half years are critical. It is the execution phase. It is why we brought Stuart Mathews on, a Former Executive Vice President of Gold Fields and someone that a lot of the Diggers people know very well, as a guy that brings a huge amount of mine build experience and execution experience to Hot Chili. He is leading our board now. We are very much positioning for a very, very aggressive year this year.
Some $60 million going into the ground across development activities, EIA preparation activities, and a very, very healthy drill budget. We look forward to the delivery of our major resource milestone towards the end of this year, to the reset pre-feasibility which positions this with arguably some of the strongest financial metrics in this space. Then ultimately culminating in our environmental impact assessment submission, probably arguably the most important milestone the company is working towards. Thank you very much for your time, and we look forward to updating Kalgoorlie again next year.
Thank you very much, Christian.