Thanks, Rob. Well, look, we have 15 minutes, so in the spirit of brevity, we'll just focus on some of the key updates on Hot Chili. For those who do not know the stock, we're one of the journeymen of the copper industry. It's great to finally see us into a new copper cycle and this project, which has taken me 15 years from listing to really be hitting its straps on scale and on timing. We're very much the pin-up child of the average time of 20 years it takes to build a brand-new, large-scale copper development for the world. Timing is everything, and Hot Chili is certainly delivering at the right time in this copper cycle. Copper, as you know, and gold are now the largest metal markets in the world, and that's driven by increasing margins and an increasing price of the underlying commodity.
The time of iron ore is over, and the time of copper, gold, has just begun. For the next 20 years, we expect this to be the place for mining investment. Some of the recent comments from the new BHP CEO have also probably told you a lot about where we are within this cycle. Any time where you move from buying production to building production, it's normally a tipping point. It's part of the early part of a cycle. It's where new greenfields developments start to become the supply response. The issue with copper has always been the inelasticity of the response for the copper industry, and that's really been driven by declining grades and very long time frames to build meaningful new production.
Very pleasing to see the CEO of BHP pointing out that it is now five times more expensive to buy existing production than it is to build greenfields new production. On the corporate slide, this has not really changed. We've been managing dilution very well. We've just continued to fill treasury with an extension of our agreement with OR Royalties on Costa Fuego now being extended to La Verde on a pre-resource asset, which speaks volumes about what's going on with our third discovery that is being integrated into what is currently a top five independent copper development globally. We've added AUD 350 million market cap. We are still a laggard to our North American peers in terms of valuation. Covered on the S&P and by most of the ETFs.
Glencore is our largest shareholder, and the stock is well into a re-rate from AUD 0.40, now at about AUD 1.70 as we speak. Also, a lot of interest in the area with some deals going on in and around Costa Fuego, which is also very pleasing to see with a number of big corporate names showing a lot of interest in this part of the Chilean coastline. Valuation metrics from an Australian primary-listed copper developer and the largest copper developer on the ASX, the largest copper resource on the ASX. We still trade at about a two and a half multiple below our North American friends. That is something that is somewhat of an arbitrage between the two countries and something that we have been continuing to bridge. Still some work to go.
We are seeing that arbitrage gap on the P/NAV transactions in the market also, which are holding at about 0.6x for advanced copper developments in the transaction space. Three key areas that we will be updating today on. Firstly, La Verde. It really is all about La Verde. We have been delivering world-class results out of this, and it looks truly transformational for the scale of Costa Fuego and for the economics, all of which are near-term catalysts for the company. We will also just give you an update on what that means for Costa Fuego, the inclusion of La Verde, and an update on Huasco Water, which is getting very close to hopefully seeing a lot of value added to Hot Chili's stock as we move towards key catalysts there. Just very quickly, this is probably the hottest place in the world for new copper supply.
One of the largest clusters of undeveloped projects, hosted by the largest names in the industry. The beautiful thing is that 18 years ago, we decided to make the coastline our home. We consolidated this large part of the coastline down at low altitude at 700 m, which of course gave us an instantaneous differentiator to nearly all of our peers. We are not up in the high Andes with our friends at Vicuña, at 4,500 m, developing very expensive copper developments that are very challenged with elevation. We are down on the coast, next to port, next to infrastructure, next to major towns, and really building a project hub and a central processing hub that will feed a + 100,000 ton scale project for multi decades.
This has been over a decade in permitting advance, and now we are situated to submit our EIA towards the end of quarter one next year, and that will start moving us towards a fully sanctioned project. La Verde, which sits 30 km to the South of our 1 billion ton resource base in the North, really has been very rapid. We only secured this asset almost two years ago, following about six to seven years of consolidation efforts. It was a previous Hudbay project, which the guys at Hudbay were not able to consolidate all the land holdings. So we were able to do that, put it in the hands of one company for the first time. Second hole produced a very strong result from surface. We moved through a 10,000 m RC program where nearly all of the holes finished in mineralization.
Started diamond drilling a year ago and have been putting out world-class porphyry results from this asset ever since. More recently, the high-grade starter pit that is materializing on this deposit has been a key feature of this discovery that is going to, no doubt, feature very heavily in the front end of Costa Fuego. Just a couple of weeks ago, we were releasing some of the up-dip drilling on the high-grade core that has been discovered from surface. This diagram here is just focusing in on an enrichment blanket that is some 70 m thick, sitting right directly above that high-grade core, with now over 14 intersections, and certainly a lot more intersections, + 15 m in true width, that have been recorded off the top of this thing.
We have a very high-grade start in the oxide to this, moving into a high-grade sulfide deposit directly underneath that. That is going to feature as probably a five-year addition into the front end of Costa Fuego and will be truly transformational for the finances of the larger project. We are also now focusing on the larger open pit and how that will integrate and how we will be able to transport that up the road with low transport and handling approach being investigated by our friends at Ausenco that are working in the feasibility team. This is just stepping back a little bit just to give you all a true indication of the scale here. We have spent 15 years on two deposits building a 1 billion ton resource. In the past 18 months, it looks like we are heading towards a 50% increase to that bulk tonnage inventory.
This is very, very meaningful. It is a deposit that is still open in all directions, and at depth, we are focusing on the open pit component. There will be a high-grade starter pit removed initially, and then we will transition into an expansion phase to bring this entire deposit into our mine plan. When we look down on this deposit from a plan view and looking down from space, we can see that really central high-grade core reflected. What is really exciting for this discovery is that we have only just commenced our step-out drilling phase. All of the drilling to date has been focused in on the high-grade core, because that is about integrating this as rapidly as we can and restating our pre-feasibility in the coming months. When we look at, firstly, what will this do to Hot Chili?
What will this do to us in the pecking order of the largest undeveloped copper resources in the world that are not controlled by a major mining company? That is very, very important. There is a classification of projects that sit within the majors, and then there is the independent space. There are not many of us. We are a top 10 at the moment, and we are probably moving to a top six in this next resource upgrade. All of the grade of the oncoming supply is very similar to the head grade of global copper production, at around about half a percent. We are no different. The copper industry is a bulk industry, and it is all about economy of scale, certainly for about 80% of global production.
In terms of meaningful scale, what does this do when we add this to the project layout of Costa Fuego that was defined in a pre-feasibility some 17 months ago? It is pushing that 20-year mine life towards 30. It is upscaling it towards 150,000 ton per annum copper equivalent production. For the Australians in the room, that is a fair bit bigger than Oz Minerals' production before it was bought by BHP. This is meaningful. It is also a production hub that has benefited from geology. We have an older geological porphyries here. They are a coastal range. They do not have a lot of carbonate in the system, and it means that they are part of the 25% of production out of Chile that can use seawater for processing and get better recoveries. That really entrenched a low capital intensity on this project.
What we are looking at is central processing at Productora, drawing in ore from all of those satellites. The next key dates for Hot Chili's progression is all about delivering our EIA at the end of Q1 next year to keep us on track for a FID in 2029 and first production in 2031. We will be one of the first large-scale new projects in the pipeline to add to the supply response. If we look back in time at what the pre-feasibility looked like in March last year, at very different long-term consensus price on copper at $4.30 and $22.80 on gold, this has not aged well at all. It was a top quartile production capacity project. It was one of the lowest capital intensities in the pipeline because of that elevation advantage and because of that seawater processing approach.
It was a project that had a ratio of post-tax NPV to CapEx of about one. That is a nice starting point. 19% post-tax IRR. All good numbers for projects about 12, 18 months ago within the industry. What we can see now, the impact of adding Costa Fuego to adding La Verde into this production hub. We see that the combination of this with the increase in long-term consensus prices is heading towards a doubling of the NPV, almost doubling of the IRR, and more importantly, that is giving you an indication that the cash flow index is moving towards a two. That is some of the most superior financial metrics for a large-scale copper asset in the pipeline.
Our cash costs are likely driving into quartile one also because of the very, very low strip ratios we are getting from that high-grade addition at La Verde to the South. Obviously, some of that is going to be a free kick. With copper long term at $5.03 at the moment, and gold long term at $3,500, we are certainly the beneficiaries, along with the rest of the industry, of rising metal prices. Our leverage will increase. We will probably end up being one of the most leveraged copper assets in the independent space. Our capital intensity will continue to decline because of that grade advantage that is being integrated. Most importantly, our position currently as the fifth largest independent copper developer in the world, we are likely to move into third or fourth place.
There are also indications that if we are successful down at La Verde on a much larger porphyry cluster, which we had recognized, if we are successful, then this project has all of the hallmarks to be scaled up again and be able to finally take its place as the largest copper development in the independent space with a 200,000-tonne project to be positioned. We have had a huge amount of work that has gone into our social integration, but we have always been unique in that not only are we down at low elevation as compared to our peers, but we also had the foresight to apply for a maritime license to extract seawater from the ocean at the same time when you could still take water out of the ground in Chile. Seven years ago, the regulations changed.
The Atacama is one of the most water-stressed regions in the world. Now you require desalination for freshwater processing projects in the high Andes. If you are lucky, like Hot Chili, and you are down on the coast, you probably have good geology and you can use seawater. We have the only seawater license in the Huasco region. That sits next to some very, very large names that are building very large projects adjacent to us at 4,000 m elevation. So we have a very, very interested group of off-takers that are discussing that with Hot Chili. We also have most of the world's largest water companies that are discussing the opportunity to buy into this project. So it is a business development opportunity.
It is very unique within Hot Chili's stable. It is our solution to funding the equity side of the copper development and shielding our shareholders from large dilution as we transition towards financing. This water project is truly unique. It is large. It is carrying no value. When we look at my life over the last 18 years in one slide, Hot Chili's journey has been a journey which is very typical of any major large-scale copper project being positioned into production. We started at the end of the last copper cycle with our first discovery. We were one of the few survivors through the downturn. We entered into the commencement of the second cycle with our second major discovery, which quadrupled the resource base. Now we have the fortune of having our third major discovery on the coastline being integrated.
This project is heading towards Tier 1 production capacity, Tier 1 metal scale, and is heading into the right part of the cycle. So thank you very much. The next six months is going to be very exciting. A lot of drill news flow, perhaps a second water license in the coming months, a major resource upgrade followed by a complete resetting of the economics as the Ausenco team that is working with our owner's team looks to build a second major project on the coastline following Capstone Copper's La Verde experience. Really, this is all about submitting our EIA at the beginning of Q2 next year and then being on track to put this into production in the early part of next decade. So thank you very much.