Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Day 2 of the Diggers and Dealers Mining Forum for 2025. First up this morning, we have Northern Star Resources and Simon Jessop, Chief Operating Officer. Simon is a mining executive with more than 30 years' experience in underground and open pit operations throughout Australia, a graduate of the WA School of Mines here in Kal, with degrees in mining engineering and surveying. Simon has held senior management roles at Saracen Mineral Holdings, Evolution Mining, Panoramic Resources, and Byrnec ut. Simon's held the position of Northern Star's Chief Operating Officer since February 2021 following the merger with Saracen. Please welcome Simon to the stage.
Thank you, Duncan and Cana ccord, and for the introduction and the opportunity to present here again at Diggers and Dealers. I want to start by highlighting a milestone that one of our operations has just passed in the last week or so, which is 30 years of continuous mining at Kanowna Belle. Now, over that journey, Kanowna Belle has mined 42 million tons of ore out of that mine and 6 million oz. You couple that with the open pit, it has actually produced 7.2 million oz of gold. When they started Kanowna Belle back in 1995, the gold price was an Australian dollar price of AUD 550 per oz. Fast forward 30 years to today, and it's over AUD 5,100 an oz.
Who would have ever dreamed that when they started that mine, the gold price would be that high, over 9x that initial price when the operation kicked off? Kanowna Belle is still producing net mine cash flow, still has a life in front of itself, and is a credit to the people who have worked there. Life at Northern Star is a really important ingredient and something that we think about across all of our operations. Today, I want to touch on the Northern Star business and the size and scale of the business you'll see throughout the presentation, but also the financial strength of this business. There's a disclaimer. Please feel free to read that on the website or at your leisure. It's fair to say in FY 2025, Northern Star had a tough year or a challenging year on production and cost. This is primarily due to KCGM.
We see that purely as just timing and nothing else. Our three production centers comprised of the Kalgoorlie Production Centre, the Yandal Production Centre, and our Pogo Mine in Alaska produced 1.63 million oz of gold and did this at an all-in sustaining cost of AUD 2,163 an oz. It is still a credit to the size and scale of this business. Going forward, we are building significant capital projects that will reduce our cost base in time to come. It's easy to say 70 million oz, and at Northern Star, that's what we've grown our resources out to. Our reserves are an impressive 22 million oz. These for the Australian assets are done at a gold price, or sorry, at a gold price that is only 44% of the current gold price.
Having a significant resource and reserve base that also is a quality resource base is absolutely critical and the foundation of a gold business. Now, 70 million rolls off the tongue fairly quickly. When you compare that to 10, that is more ounces in resource and reserves than we have for 10 WA-listed gold producers. We've certainly been busy over the last four years. In FY 2022, we delivered no less than 39 trucks into KCGM as a major fleet delivery, plus a whole heap of other stuff. The Thunderbox process plant kicked off, and that is to grow from 3 million tons per annum to 6 million tons per annum. In FY 2023, we started commissioning the Thunderbox process plant, and Pogo continued its journey in terms of optimizing that particular mine.
In KCGM, we really kicked off the underground growth in FY 2024, and we saw quarterly run rates well in excess of the Pogo goal of 300,000 ounces per annum. In FY25, we completed the KCGM East Wall Remediation, and that is now behind us. We also saw Pogo achieve its financial payback. What does all this translate to? It translates to a net mine cash flow over those four years of AUD 3.2 billion. In the last 12 months, as some of our capital projects have wound off and kicked into gear, we saw a step change of another AUD 500 million year on year. I'd also like to highlight Kalgoorlie operations and Carosue Dam. They typically go under the radar for us as a business, but in the last year, generated AUD 650 million of net mine cash flow.
Over the last four years, we have also produced or given back to shareholders AUD 1.4 billion in dividends. This equates to, over the journey since 2012, AUD 2.4 billion coming back to shareholders in capital management. A fantastic number. The story of KCGM really, since 2018, has all been about the wall slip and the open pit. I can tell you in the last 12 months, we have mined 74 million tons out of the open pit. We have developed 28 km of drives in the underground, and we've milled over 12 million tons of ore. The new story for KCGM should be about delivering growth and unlocking KCGM's full potential as a world-class asset. Having the KCGM operation, you have to be the most visible mining project in Australia. Each year, we have over 200,000 people go to the Super Pit Lookout and look across this vast operation.
It is impressive to see, and it's something that we're very proud of. Mining the east wall that occurred in May 2018 has been a challenge. It has taken slightly longer than we anticipated. When you look at rocks put together from the failure of 30,000 tons - 40,000 tons, all covered in rill, we had to safely mine and execute our way through that. What I'm most proud about is that over 55 months of mining, 34 million tons, the east wall is now complete. I would like to highlight a few people who have worked very diligently on this project over the last four years. Kous Kirsten , Justin Foster, Sean Davies, and [Hamindra] should be very proud of the result of this project. Going forward, we have now seen a step change in productivities at the open pit.
We're getting back to business as usual instead of dealing with this east wall. This slide is simply outstanding and is why KCGM is absolutely valued so highly in our portfolio. Over the six years, you've seen the resources grow from 19 million oz - 38 million oz over those six years. That's a 104% increase on the resource base. Our ore reserves have also grown to 14 million oz, or a 48% increase. They are huge numbers. All of this has come at a discovery cost of only AUD 12 an oz. You can see in the last couple of years, it has been AUD 8 and AUD 6 an oz. The interesting part of the 38 million oz at KCGM is that 15 million of those ounces is in underground, and we only have 3 million oz in reserve.
We firmly believe that with time, drilling, and effort, the underground resources and reserves at KCGM will overtake the open pit at this asset. Despite a tough year at KCGM, we still sold 419,000 oz of gold. Now we're guiding for FY 2026, 550,000 oz- 600,000 oz of gold. That's because we're now in the Golden Pike North, the high-grade portion of the open pit. I'd like to remind people that this is all pre the KCGM mill expansion, which will be kicking in in less than a year from now. Once that mill hits nameplate, it will be going up to 850,000 oz - 900,000 oz per year. You can also see the potential Hemi project 10-year production profile at 530,000 oz per year. Our short-term focus at KCGM really is around executing our operating plans.
It sounds simple, and it is, but we've had a major distraction of the east wall for the last four years. It's getting back to that business as usual, efficient mining at KCGM. We're looking forward to commencing the new tail storage facility, which will take all the tails from the expanded process plant. In the underground, from FY 2020, we only developed 4.5 km. Last year, we developed 28 km. In the year ahead, we will develop 36 km - 40 km at KCGM by itself. Our contractor of choice for KCGM is, without a doubt, Northern Star Mining Services. They are executing this ramp-up as fast as anyone could and putting in significant infrastructure to set this up for multiple decades. In the last 12 months, they've cut seven portals at KCGM and have 585 people working at the site and 10 jumbos running around.
Lastly, because we've got a bit of capacity back, we are really focused on extracting quality ore from the open pit, which has over 600 loads. Now we've got some time and capacity. We're very focused on improving the quality of ore that we send to the mill. This project is simply massive. We are building a mill expansion to go from 12 to 13 million tons to 27 million tons per annum. We're in the third year of a build, so we're in the last year of this build, which is very, very exciting because we're seeing it all going up and it's getting down to the pointy end of this project. It absolutely remains on time, on budget, and on track. I'm really looking forward to the cash flows that's going to come out of this mill from the 2.9 million oz we have on stockpile.
We poured over 24,000 cubes of concrete up to date. 85% of it's done. There's over 5,400 tons of steel in this project, and over half of that is complete. The project's going exceptionally well. I want to move on to the Yandal production hub now, which comprises Thunderbox and Jundee. Our focus at Jundee and Thunderbox really is around cost reduction and ensuring we are not mining just higher and higher cost ounces going forward. What I'm really impressed about is both process plants at these operations are at nameplate and/or above. It's now around stabilizing the costs at both of those processing plants. Jundee is the usual busy, busy mine. It does 30 km of development. We drill over 460 km of diamond drill holes every year. This operation produced a net mine cash flow of AUD 430 million in the last 12 months.
Going forward, we're guiding Yandal as a production center to be between 500,000 oz and 550,000 oz per annum. We see this as the sweet spot between ounces, costs, and cash flow generation. Pogo has had one system and one strategy for quite some time. That has been renovate the mine, optimize the mine, and grow it out to 300,000 oz. Pogo has had an outstanding FY 2025. In quarter four, they delivered 85,000 oz and 283,000 oz gold sold over the year at a U.S. dollar gold price of $1,341 an ounce. It's coming. Okay. Pogo is positioned absolutely for strong results. You can see the net mine cash flow generation at this asset has gone from AUD 52 million a few years ago to AUD 297 million in the last 12 months. Now, I'd just like to remind everyone, Pogo was purchased for U.S. $260 million in 2018.
In the last 12 months, the net mine cash flow has been bigger than the original purchase price. The optimisation phase is ongoing in the mine. The annualised run rate in the process plant is going exceptionally well above nameplate. Pogo is now a consistent and reliable production centre. Okay. While we're still busy at Pogo, in the last couple of months, Northern Star Mining Services and Northern Star have cut two portals. These two portals are to access the central veins and the Goodpaster deposits. Those two deposits by themselves have 1.5 million oz at 10 g/ t. We're excited to get underground off these new platforms, start the infill drilling, and really see the next generation what we can do at Pogo. It will give us future mining optionality as well as grade optionality for this asset. We still come back to Pogo has 6.2 million oz.
We are now considering what are the expansion potential projects we could do with this asset. Not just ounces, but also cash flow. Struggling a bit. Okay. Onto Hemi. This is our newest growth engine. We have only had Hemi for three months. I really am happy to have new shareholders join the register. The advantage we see for new shareholders is that you are joining a net positive cash flow business that pays dividends and also brings significant operational skills and expertise on project delivery into this acquisition. It is absolutely on point and to strategy. Just to remind people where Hemi is, it is 85 km from Port Hedland. It's in a Tier- 1 jurisdiction. There is over 11 million oz as the last published resource from De Grey. It has significant mine life, and it will be a low-cost operation.
It has a lot of geological upside that we see between some of the resources from an underground perspective have over 23,000 oz per vertical meter. In terms of stakeholder engagement, we continue to engage with all stakeholders and are working towards a positive delivery outcome and a win-win for all parties. Hemi at the moment is waiting on project approvals as we anticipated. While those project approvals are happening, we are optimizing the mine designs, the processing plan, and going through every particular element that we can for this project. A lot of good work has been done. However, we are looking at this through the lens of an operating business and bringing those skills and expertise to it. We do see plenty of optimization to happen.
When we get the project approved, we will update the pricing, and we will take this through to final investment decision to the Northern Star board. In an ideal world, we would see the capital at KCGM mill expansion roll off. We would then see a step change positive lift for cash flow generation at KCGM. We can transfer the skills who are match fit after building the KCGM mill expansion onto this project, as well as the Northern Star operating model. In summary, Northern Star is still very, very busy, and we are growing. We are growing profitable ounces across the portfolio. Our major projects such as a AUD 1.5 billion mill expansion, our open pit stripping, and our underground development is all around targeting cost reductions in the future.
Having 70 million oz in resource, 22 million oz on reserve, we have plenty of portfolio value to unlock and optionality. We are transitioning as that capital comes off from massive projects like the KCGM one into a step change in terms of cash flow generation. Hemi is absolutely the next leg of the journey for Northern Star. I'd like to thank you for your time today.