Thank you, and great to be here again. This time last year was a bit unusual. We were actually in a trading halt because on the Wednesday night at 10:00 P.M., we decided to raise $70 million, three days after we just completed a $110 million U.S. bond. We were actually in a trading halt, so there was very little I could really say. It's quite interesting. I'll give you an update from where we've come then. This is a project that we acquired at the end of 2023. It's in Hillgrove, and we'll be mainly talking about Hillgrove today, which is just out of Armidale in rural New South Wales. We've also got 1,000 sq km of ground about Mount Isa. Can't talk too much about that because there could be ASX people in the room, and it's getting quite interesting up there at the moment.
Mainly talking about Hillgrove and how that's progressed along and what's happened. We're basically building an Australian critical minerals company. We will be producing gold, but we will also be doing antimony and, in the very near future, tungsten from Hillgrove. We'd like to think within 12 months or so, copper from Mount Isa. That will make it a pretty interesting company moving forward. We will be Australia's largest antimony producer, and we'll be about the fifth largest in the world and certainly the largest outside of China-controlled entities. It's been a pretty interesting run. This is really just taking you through the journey that we've been through on Hillgrove and then touching up where we are at Mount Isa. When we started this process, when we acquired Hillgrove, you can see the prices of the commodities there, November 2023.
I've got August 2025 there for another reason, and you'll see that in the next slide, and sort of where we are today. You'll see most of those commodity prices are considerably higher than where we were when we got into the project. We got into the project because it actually worked at the time. We're pretty happy with how the trend is going. Tungsten has been an interesting one that's popped up from nowhere to really quite ludicrous numbers at the moment. That's been an interesting ride. On this one, I do actually want to talk about the people involved in the company who have got us to where we are. We haven't been around long, and we will be producing in a very short period of time. We're not counting, but it's 18,342 man-hours from now, we will be producing.
To put that into perspective, we do about 25,000 man-hours a month. By the end of August, we will actually be producing. That's a big thing for New South Wales and a great thing for us. For a company that's not that old, we're all pretty happy. How did we get here? The people really made it happen. Mark Tomlinson, our Chairman, very technical underground mining engineer, and that really works for me, but also a spectacular corporate review over many, many years. Myself, more technical-orientated. Rachelle concludes the small board. It's a small board because we can move quickly, and I think we've demonstrated that. Rachelle's got more degrees than probably everybody else in the room. She covers our two main issues, and we've got issues. It's going to be people and the environment, and she's a psychologist with a degree in environmental science.
She ticks all the boxes and she speaks for 50% of the population. Mark and I have known one another for a long time. Sonja, our COO, first worked together, well, I'm not allowed to say, but it was about 30-something years ago. Nick has built six mines so far, including Boddington. Jim Kerr and I first worked together about 35 years ago as well. And Scott, our operations manager on site, unbelievable experience in numerous countries. That is the team that has made this happen and happen so quickly. Well, it is not funny, really. It has been a wild ride. Quick overview of shares there, about AUD 520 million out. Our market cap at the moment is over AUD 600 million. As of today, cash in the bank, AUD 81 million, when we could last say what it is. We are still well cashed up.
The management side, US Antimony on the shareholder list, along with 1832. That is quite interesting. US Antimony did have a go at trying to take us over last year but did not really turn up with enough money. Had a go at about AUD 750 million, and that was not good enough to get there. The tailwinds that have followed us through this, because it has been a wild ride, and when we bought the project, most people had never heard of antimony. Could not spell it and most could not pronounce it, and all fairness to the Americans in the audience, still cannot. My standing joke on that one is they tend to call it anti-money and we call it lots of money. It has gone from nowhere to heading the Australian Critical Minerals stockpile list. It is one of the most critical metals around.
There are amazing things that you just cannot do with it. What has driven one of the major shortages is actually making solar panels. You cannot make a good solar panel without antimony, and that increase in demand tied in with a very significant decrease in supply is what has driven the price. What has filled the gap at the moment is a lot of artisanal mining, particularly out of Myanmar and places like Chad. We do expect that artisanal mining to fade away. There are only so many people you can have holing around in thongs, and hopefully at one point, the world will wake up that that is not the ethical way to do business. But at the moment, that is what is filling it. We deal a huge amount with government, more than I have ever done.
I have been in the industry for over 40 years now. We are constantly talking to at least six governments at an incredibly high level. Because of that, we have brought in David Fawcett, who is a strategic advisor. He was Assistant Minister for Defence in the previous federal government. He has been in defense before that for all of his career, and advises us at a level that we just do not operate as poor dumb miners. That has been great. Also assisted by Penny Walsh, whose previous job was head of Government Relations for BP. They have truly helped us engage on a level with governments in a way that most mining companies do not do, especially junior ones.
There's a lot coming on that because we're very focused now on value-adding our product, both for AUKUS security, and for many other reasons, on actually providing a midstream product, so actually antimony metal rather than the concentrate that we produce now. There'll be a lot coming up on that as we move forward. Where we are, that's our process plant. As I say, that will be operational by the end of August. I was on site when we commissioned the front end of that, the jaw crusher secondaries and screen decks on that, and we're now filling the fine ore bin, which is on the bottom left-hand side of that photo. That's coming along well.
The wet plant will be starting to ramp up over the next couple of weeks. Then we bring in our filter presses because we're putting in a dry stack tailings facility. We're using world-leading technology rather than a wet tails dam. There's lots and lots of benefits. It's a challenging environment. We're on the edge of a 500 m high cliff, which is a bit unusual in Australia. That gives us all sorts of challenges. The team on site have worked brilliantly through that. Our resource at the moment, it's quite nice, 1.7 million ounces, and if grade is king, and it absolutely is, 7.5 g is not a bad number to have. Even probably more importantly, we've got 2+ million ounce exploration targets. The new Midas Zone that's been released quite recently is unbelievably exciting. The numbers are spectacular.
Directly along strike from the Syndicate Zone that we're starting mining on and we've been mining underground now for three months. I was down there 500 m below ground a couple of weeks ago, and I was standing 50 m from the Midas Zone that three months ago nobody knew anything about. There's easily 1 million ounces in that fellow. The potential of this area is huge, and we'll get into that a little bit as we move forward. As I say, commissioning there, that's the front end of the plant. That was all fired up. That's why there's so many people wandering around aimlessly, and it went perfectly except the jaw crusher was wired up the wrong way around. Once we fixed that, it was all good. Somebody's going to get a carton fine for that one. We are mining underground.
Exploration, it's all about exploration now that we're there, we'll talk a bit about that. If you have a look at the area that we've got there, 255 sq km of ground. Quite a big area. We're actually on site about 12 minutes after you drive from Armidale, it's very accessible. If you have a look right there where the arrow points at Hillgrove project, you'll see a little cross. Let's go and have a look at what that area is. This is where we are now. That's one little dot in that big area. We have probably 20 strike kilometers of mineralization within a few kilometers of the plant. The areas in red are where our current resources are. The areas in blue are where there's known mineralization.
That area in purple is where the Midas Zone is, which is directly along strike from Syndicate. We'll have a look at that one at the moment. There is so much work to do in this area, it's just not funny. We are currently mining from Syndicate, and we'll be moving on to Sunlight, and we'll be there for a couple of years. We've got Clarks Gully right up in the north, which is still only 5 km away. That was in that little dot that was on the project, and you could spend five or six years just exploring in that area without doing anything else. We've had four rigs running in this area now for 18 months, and they have knocked out some truly wonderful results, which are starting to come together.
In the very near future, you'll see some pretty significant upgrades to resources and reserves as we move forward. If we just have a look at one of those areas. First off, the Midas Zone. We just released this as our exploration target. You'll see that it's quite a wide zone. It's directly adjacent to the Syndicate Zone, and those big black areas are areas where mining is already undertaken. The next couple of years, we'll be mining the lower levels of that, and then we've got this thing sitting next door. As you'll see, some pretty great results there, 4.5 m at 27 g, 10 m at 4 g within a wider zone. We're drilling this at the moment. We've got three rigs working on this area. Really exciting, and this is just one of many.
If we go and have a look at our other target, these are the areas that are directly below the currently mined zones. All we've done is extend known mineralization that's got a lot of drill holes in it, but not enough to put it into a resource category, but more than enough directly below the zones. We've only extended those zones down to the deepest mine in the area. We're not having a lend by pushing it down hundreds and hundreds of meters. We've just gone down to the deepest part in the field. There is absolutely no doubt that all of those zones extend. If it's like, say, the Southern Cross mineralization and the Fosterville mineralization, which it is, as you get deeper, you typically get more gold. We look forward to getting down into those areas.
That's going to be a big time moving forward. Just a quick review of our regional exploration areas. That's our office. It's actually located right next to the airport. Within that, we're the only company in Australia to have a LIBS, which is a laser ablation scanner. We had BHP and Fortescue in there testing this the other day. We are absolutely leading-edge technology in this. This is easily the best-equipped core yard in Australia, and that allows us to do mineralogy at a level where most people can't even wrap their minds around, and that is vitally important to feed into our metallurgist as we move forward. We are really serious about what we're doing here, both underground technical and open cut technical. Mount Isa, just quickly, we've just purchased the Blockade Mine. That's a mine that was mined by Mount Isa in the 1960s.
We're looking forward to bringing that on in the near future. That will be processed at Mount Isa, which is only 40 km away, and we'll start to produce copper there. We'll be moving into this once we get Hillgrove moving on. We've also got a few other activities happening up there, which I really can't get into at the moment, but it was one of our lead areas. We listed on this. We love Mount Isa. We're doing a lot with Glencore and talking to others in the area. Now that we've got Hillgrove away, we'll get a focus on this because it really is all about copper moving forward, I think. The Blockade Mine sitting there in the middle of that tenement, and we totally surround that Blockade Mine.
It took us years to get it, but we finally got it, so that's what we're going to be mining next. I'll finish on that one. That's where we went. Your clock and my clock is different. Thank you.