Next up, we have one of the great Australian growth gold stories of the past 18 months, Minerals 260, who have grown their Bullabulling project in W.A. from 2.3 million ounces at acquisition to 6.2 million ounces today. They are backed by a major reserve, a compelling pre-feasibility study, and are undertaking development work already. Please welcome to the stage Managing Director, Luke McFadyen.
Good morning, everyone. It is great to be back here. Thank you to Red Cloud Securities for another wonderful conference. As introduced, I am Luke McFadyen, the CEO and Managing Director. 12 months ago, I was here and the share price was AUD 0.17. Last night, we closed at AUD 0.90. So it has been a fantastic year. Congratulations to everyone who bought stock after I presented last year. I am sorry, Ollie is taking more of it next year. But it is a really great story over the last 12 months. We are certainly proud of what we have achieved, and it is a completely different story this year compared to last year, given what we have achieved, what we have announced, and I certainly look forward to going through more of that today. Minerals 260 is unique.
Every single one of these pillars here is core to our strategy, and each one by themselves would be a reason enough to invest in a company. But when you combine them all, you have got four unique reasons to invest in Minerals 260. If you start with the team, Tim Goyder is the Chair. He is also the second-largest shareholder. He has stood on this stage with many of his companies over the years, and year-on-year, showing you success. An incredible board, an incredible executive team that is continuing to drive this company. The shareholder register, again, unique to a company at this stage of development. We have all the wonderful retail shareholders like yourselves on the register, but then we have a really advanced institution register that can back this company's strategy for the long term.
At the end of last quarter, we had over $200 million in the bank. So we are not constrained by capital to drill, to develop, and progress this project into an operation. The resource itself is really what is driving the value in this project. We bought 2.3 million ounces 15 months ago today at 6.2 million ounces. It is still going to grow. We are still drilling it, and we continue to look for opportunities to improve grade and improve ounces in the ground. We have now got the largest resource not owned by an operator in Australia, to put it into that context. Again, another unique part of this company is that we started construction of the project before we finished the PFS. Just think about that. No one else in this conference this year has rarely ever done that.
The reason for that is the location, the ore body, the capital in the bank, the strategy for the company, and the backing of our shareholders. We are still progressing with studies, so externally, everyone understands what we are trying to achieve. At the same time, we are dealing with an ore body that continues to grow as we are studying it, so we embed growth into its design. I have got a couple of minute video just to show you what is going on on the ground at the moment in terms of location, bit of a snapshot of the ore body, and then also activity on the ground. I am not going to talk over the video. There is some very dramatic music coming up. What you saw there was construction of the village and the installation of the water bores right at the end.
From a corporate overview perspective, like I said, the market cap tipped over $2 billion just yesterday, from about $ 270 million the last time I was here last year. We are incredibly proud of what has been achieved. Our top 20 continues to buy on market. Our directors, employees continuing to buy on market. There is some great research out there, and I am sure if you contacted any of those, they would send it to you.
How have we achieved what we have done? I have just taken some snapshots of what we have done over the last year. It has been an incredibly busy 12 months, but not busy for busy sake. What we have been able to deliver is real tangible value for our shareholders. Tangible outcomes in terms of studies, resource growth, two resource updates in a year is an incredibly fast pace from a geology perspective.
The commencement of a DFS, like I said, the commencement of construction, and then funding really unlocks this project over the next 12 months. Team-wise, there is one important addition to the board in the last 12 months, where Adam Smits, who would be very familiar to the audience, where he was the COO of Liontown for many years and brought the project from its deposit into an operation today.
Josh O'Kane joined us recently as the GM, Investor Relations, and that is a very old photo of Josh. I just thought I would take a snapshot of the gold market. It is a little bit volatile at the moment. It went up, it went down, and then it is coming back fairly strongly. If you think about where gold has come from over the last couple of years, it is still up 80% year-on-year. Over the last two years.
It is an incredibly strong market. Perfect market for moving projects through the development phase. Ollie's talk about tungsten and Tim is a very similar thematic, where you are riding that price wave through the development phase and into operations. The reasons to invest in gold have not changed, despite the price moving over the last couple of months. It is still the best safe haven for investment. It is still an offset to inflation and risk. It is still highly attractive to central banks as the US dollar depreciates. None of those reasons to invest in gold have changed. If you look at what Minerals 260 has been able to achieve against the gold price. Spot gold went up 30% in the last 12 months, and Minerals 260 went up over 550%.
When you are looking for that exposure to gold, you are looking for that leverage, and that is what Minerals 260 offers. The reasons to invest in gold have not changed, and then you are looking for the best exposure to that commodity. The reason why we have been successful is really this. This is the ore body growth over the last 15 months. We bought that April 2025 deposit. We have drilled over 170,000 meters. It was one of the largest campaigns in the last 12 months. At its peak, we had 11 rigs drilling on site. There are still half a dozen rigs there today, and we continue to dial up and down the rigs based on timing and availability of rigs. One of the other reasons we have been successful is the acquisition of tenements in and around Coolgardie to unlock this resource.
If you look at that resource in April, there is a northern and southern tenement boundary. Geology does not stop at tenement boundaries, and we have continued to buy tenements north and south along strike of the resource to where we are now in July 2026. It is unconstrained by tenement boundaries. Today's resource is just under 9 km long. The potential resource length is now 20 km long, given the acquisition of all these tenements. We acquired 130 sq km in the initial acquisition, and now we sit on just over 1,500 sq km. Importantly, one of the reasons why we have been successful at compounding that value month on month is the discovery cost. Today, we are trading at about $ 270, $280 an ounce in the ground for that market cap. But we are discovering gold at somewhere around $12 an ounce.
Incredible value through the drill bit, and this is really what is driving us going forward to continue that very low discovery cost. Location-wise, couldn't be in a better location in Australia to build and develop and operate a gold mine. Surrounded by existing gold mines 65 km from the gold capital of Australia. This is the place in Australia where things get done, things get permitted, and things turn into operations. If we zoom into the ore body, that 6.2 million ounces is underpinned by 4.4 million ounces of Indicated Mineral Resource. That is an important component because that is what gets converted into a reserve. Today's reserve is based off the previous resource of 4.5 million ounces, which only had 3 million ounces of indicated.
We converted 80% of the previous indicated ounces into that reserve, and we are looking to upgrade the reserve when we come out with a DFS early next year. To put that into context, that 6.2 is the third largest undeveloped resource in Australia now, the largest not owned by a producer. It stands head and shoulders above everything else in the developer space. As I said, from an exploration potential perspective, we continue to see opportunities to grow this resource both north and south and down dip. Targets we have defined are being drilled at the moment. In addition to that, in addition to Bullabulling itself, we continue to look for regional targets across that 1,500km square package. The study that we put out a couple of months ago is the beginning, not the end, of how we think about this project.
We are completing a staged development of Bullabulling. The reason for that is very similar to what OZ Minerals did with Carrapateena, where it is such a large opportunity, you embed growth into the design, and you continue growing the operation as the resource is growing. That is how we think about developing Bullabulling. It has that potential to go for up to 20 years. We have defined a 19-year mine life, at about a $2,500 all-in sustaining cost. We are targeting a 7.5 million ton plant, which will deliver 200,000 ounces. A significant scale by any measure. Doesn't want to work. There we go. From a reserve perspective, like I said, 2.5 million ounces already. At the beginning, this is with our maiden ore reserve that we came out with in July that was based off the previous resource.
To put that into context, again, unsurprisingly, it is one of the largest reserves in development and the largest reserve not owned by a producer. How do you embed growth into the design? Well, you go through your flow sheet, and you work out what is best to commence with large scale, like a crusher. Our crusher will be 7.5 million tons. Then something like a ball mill, you just allow space for. Rather than coming back in the second or third year and wondering how we are going to grow this project and grow the ounces and ultimately value, we think about growing this project and operations from day one. Batteries in this are flat. There we go. From an approvals perspective, again, fantastic location that enables this thing to move through the process incredibly quickly. Everything progressing to plan.
We move through the Western Australia state approvals over the next six to nine months, which will continue to unlock this project. Once these final three approvals come through, that is the license to then go and start building the processing plant. That really begins the main construction phase of the project, which we expect to occur in the first quarter of next year. Because we are going to be in Coolgardie and around Kalgoorlie for many years, that community engagement is key. It allows you to move through your development phase and into operations in the best possible form. Being a good corporate citizen is part of business these days. We are already embedding ourselves in the community, supporting local schools.
Again, it is one of the things that is not unique to Minerals 260, larger companies do this all the time, but unique to the developer space to allocate capital to support the community as you move through development. From a funding perspective, we announced an industry-leading deal with Franco-Nevada earlier this year. AUD 220 million invested by one of the largest investment companies in the world. That unlocks everything that we are doing at the moment on-site. Then to look forward, over the next three to six months, we update the reserve. We come out with the PFS. We will define the scale and the economics of that expansion study, and then start that main construction period early next year, looking for that first production target at the end of 2028. Thank you very much. It has been a fantastic 12 months.
I look forward to seeing you all again in 12 months' time. Thanks again.