We're just heading down the road now. Minerals 260, Luke McFadyen, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Luke has been the Managing Director of Minerals 260 for three years. Before joining Minerals 260, he worked at OZ Minerals, Syrah Resources, South32, and BHP across several commodities, including gold, copper, nickel, graphite, aluminum, and iron ore. He's a fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, and holds a Master's of Mineral and Energy Economics, and an MBA from Curtin University. Together with Minerals 260's Chairman, Tim Goyder, Luke played a key role in driving the company's transformational acquisition of the Bullabulling Gold Project in April 2025, and guiding it towards becoming Australia's next large-scale gold mine. Luke?
Thanks very much. Thanks for the intro. Good morning. As introduced, I'm Luke McFadyen, the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Minerals 260. 12 months ago, I stood on this stage and introduced to you a company with a market cap of AUD 220 million and a resource of 2.3 million ounces that we'd acquired four months earlier. The PFS hadn't commenced and drilling was still ramping up. Today I'm back to show you what a year of disciplined execution looks like. Bullabulling is now 6.2 million ounces. We have a maiden Ore Reserve of 2.5 million ounces. We've completed the PFS. Early construction activities have commenced, we entered the S&P/ASX 200 last month. It's the same project, a very different conversation 12 months later.
Everyone at Minerals 260 is incredibly proud of what we've delivered in the last 12 months, more importantly, we're just getting started, we're excited by what the future holds still. Our story and value proposition sits on four simple pillars. Each one in its own right would be a reason to invest, combined creates a unique value proposition that is Minerals 260. We're a team with a track record across multiple companies, countries, and commodities, a strong balance sheet following that industry-leading deal that we did with Franco-Nevada earlier this year that reinvented how the Australian mining industry thinks about royalties. Bullabulling is now a genuine Tier 1 asset with a clearly defined pathway to production, by embedding growth in our design of the future operations, we will ensure we continue to grow the business alongside this rapidly growing resource.
Like I said, 12 months ago, we were a very different company. The share price was AUD 0.10, we had daily liquidity of about AUD 1 million. Today, the market cap is closer to AUD 1.4 billion. The share price is just over AUD 0.60, daily liquidity around AUD 15 million. We've grown this company by adding value through the drill bit, significantly de-risking the project, rapidly advancing it towards production. Our investor base remains incredibly strong continues to back our strategy to unlock value at the project with our register of high-quality domestic and global funds and retail investors. Our golden values were recently released, they will guide how we work, support our communities, contribute to the success of our business.
The one that's really stood out for me in this last year has been deliver. You will hear a lot about how the company has delivered on building the team, the resource, the project, and of course, the funding throughout the rest of this presentation. The board that was shown here last year is still the same, with one important addition. Adam Smits joined us recently as a Non-Executive Director. He's very well known to the industry through his many years building gold projects around the world, and more recently, as his last executive role as Chief Operating Officer at Liontown. I'm here representing one of three companies presenting today that Tim Goyder is the Chairman of, and given they cover lithium, gold, and uranium, and production, development, and exploration, it highlights his incredible influence on this industry.
Our company continues to attract high-caliber, enthusiastic, and excellent people, and many of them are here with me this week. This team has the experience and success before at other companies, and we bring that all to deliver it at Minerals 260. In case you haven't followed the story in the last 12 months, Bullabulling sits 65 km from this venue, straight down the Great Eastern Highway. You would have driven past it if you drove here from Perth. I don't need to tell this audience, it's the best jurisdiction in Australia to build a new gold mine. We are surrounded by large and small gold producers, and we look forward to one day soon joining the list of gold producers in WA, which is the state that delivers 70% of Australia's gold production.
As a recap, in April last year, we acquired 2.3 million ounces for AUD 166 million. In December last year, we grew the resource from 2.3 million ounces - 4.5 million ounces , and we thought that was pretty good. Last month, Bullabulling grew again to 6.2 million ounces. 70% is Indicated, and importantly, we've maintained the head grade. The growth has certainly exceeded our own expectations about what Bullabulling would become when we first acquired it. We still believe there's a significant amount of value and growth still to come. This slide really summarizes the last 12 months- 13 months of our work because growth hasn't been accidental. In the last year, we've drilled over 170,000 meters since the acquisition, and at its peak, 11 rigs were on site.
We've acquired over an additional 1,000 sq km to now unconstrain the resource by tenement boundaries and unlock growth potential along strike to both the north and south. Importantly, we're growing this resource economically with a discovery cost of AUD 14 an ounce in December, AUD 12 an ounce in July. It's one of the reasons why we've been able to compound value so rapidly and outperform the gold price by 400% in the last year. To put that 6.2 into context, Bullabulling is now one of the largest undeveloped gold projects in Australia, sitting alongside the other genuine Tier 1 assets and the largest resource not owned by an existing producer. We still have growth to go. The resource is open north of Dixons, south of Kraken, west of Gibraltar. The strike length of the resource today is just under 9 km .
The potential strike length is now up to 20 km. Our next phase of exploration at Bullabulling will focus on three key complementing areas: resource growth, regional exploration, and production readiness. High-grade trends have been identified within the existing resource. They represent a potential serious opportunity to enhance the resource or support earlier years of production. Along strike from Kraken, the new Endeavour prospect that we acquired recently is interpreted to sit along the same structure as the current resource. Historical drilling indicates the presence of mineralization. Regionally, across that large package I talked about, large areas remain underexplored despite the favorable geological settings, providing us with a substantial pipeline of new targets.
Our strategy is to stage the development of Bullabulling, but not with separate, discrete investments, but in an embedded growth design, which ensures ramping up to our 200,000 ounces aspiration is efficient, capital light, and lower risk. The PFS numbers for the first stage speak for themselves. A post-tax NPV of AUD 2.3 billion, a 43% IRR, and two years payback is an outstanding return for the first stage. An all-in sustaining cost of just over AUD 2,500 an ounce will ensure we're highly competitive when we are in production. For the investment capital, you get 19 years of production and free cash flow of AUD 330 million a year every year. There isn't another developer that can deliver that scale of value. It's going to be a long life, high margin, large scale project.
We'll start with 150,000 ounces in Stage 1. First production is started to commence at the end of 2028. A feature becoming increasingly important for Australian projects and the industry overall is approvals, but ours are our strength. We have a land use agreement with our traditional owners, but more importantly, it's an excellent and genuine relationship with them. This reserve didn't exist when I stood here last year because we had not yet published one. Today, our maiden Ore Reserve of 2.5 million ounces is the largest reserve not owned by a producer. This reserve was based off the 4.5 million ounce resource from December, where 85% of the 3 million ounces of Indicated material converted.
We expect that reserve to continue to grow when we release the DFS and a new reserve in early 2027 because it'll be based off the new 6.2 million ounces, which has 4.4 million ounces of Indicated material. It's the same story as the resource chart as it is with reserve, where Bullabulling now ranks amongst one of the largest undeveloped gold reserves in the country. Because we assumed our resource and reserves would continue to grow over time, we were deliberate about having our Stage 1 embedded with optionality and growth options. It will commence as a 5 million ton a year plant, but the front end will have either infrastructure or space to support an efficient expansion to 7.5 million tons a year, which will allow us to achieve that 200,000 ounces a year.
Our approvals are tracking to plan. We've hit every milestone we said we would. Our mine development and closure proposal to commence construction of the village was granted in May. Our second MDCP and works approvals were submitted in July. None of this happens without a genuine social license to operate. Like I said, we have a great working relationship with the traditional owners and a supportive mining community around us that we don't take for granted. Instead, we look forward to contributing to the Coolgardie community for many years to come by supporting employment, education, and commercial opportunities. This is happening on the ground now at Bullabulling. In April, we signed a contract with ATCO for a 400-person village. Earthworks and room manufacturing commenced soon after.
400 rooms will be operational by the first quarter of next year to support our full construction phase and then the future operation. Water bores are being drilled and tested right now. Our first grade control program of 30,000 meters was completed last month, which is a significant step in de-risking the future operation. None of this construction or exploration would've been possible without funding. In February, we secured Franco-Nevada's largest-ever Australian investment, AUD 220 million split between an AUD 170 million royalty and an AUD 50 million equity placement for Franco to now become a major shareholder. Franco-Nevada is the largest and best gold royalty company in the world. They don't write a check without significant technical due diligence. We couldn't be more pleased with this deal and the great relationship we now have with Franco-Nevada. Yes, like all other development projects, we do require further funding.
Beyond that Franco-Nevada's investment, we're running a highly competitive debt process with multiple domestic and international banks. We're targeting the finalization of those terms to support FID in the first quarter of next year. This is our development plan. As you'll see, there's a lot that's already been completed from the acquisition, the drilling, the resource updates, the maiden reserve, the PFS, now early construction, all done on or ahead of schedule to the same timeline I presented here last year. What's coming up is the DFS, the receipt of final approvals, completion of our funding process, then FID in the first quarter of next year. First production in the fourth quarter of 2028 is the same timeline that I showed last year. We said we'd deliver this timetable last year. We're still on track to deliver it.
To wrap it up, 12 months ago, I presented to you a company with 2.3 million ounces and a plan to deliver a lot of work. We've completed that over the last 12 months to now sit on 6.2 million ounces resource, 2.5 million ounces reserve, a PFS that's been completed, AUD 220 million investment from one of the best-known global names in mining finance, and a village under construction. It's the same company, the same project, 12 months of delivery. Thank you. I look forward to updating you again next year with our progress.