Key to the team is Andrew Pardey, who's our Managing Director. He's actually spent 10 years working in two of the gold mines in Guinea between about 1998 and 2008, and then he moved across to SEMAFO, a London-listed company, where he was instrumental in developing and operating the Sukari Gold Mine in Egypt, which produces about half a million ounces per annum. So he's got a unique combination of experience there of operating in Guinea but also running a major listed gold miner. Also joining at the conference today is Henk Diederichs, our Chief Operating Officer, so please drop past the booth and have a chat with us later. About Guinea, we're finding Guinea a good jurisdiction to be operating in at the moment.
It's got a strong mining culture with a long history of mining, and it's got a government that's very supportive and keen to see more projects and mines developed within the country. Looking at Guinea's mining landscape, on the top right-hand corner of this slide, it's got a bauxite industry that's been running for more than 50 years, and Guinea is actually one of the largest producers and exporters of bauxite in the world. It's got an emerging but significant iron ore industry in the south of the country. We'd all be aware of the Simandou Iron Ore Project, which is the largest mining development that's happening globally at the moment.
We see with Simandou that Rio Tinto and the Chinese are investing more than $20 billion to develop an iron ore mine in Guinea, and it's moving ahead at a rapid rate of knots, and that really shows what we can do in Guinea. The gold industry is located in the northeast of the country. It's on the Siguiri Basin, which is part of the prolific West African Birimian Greenstone Belt, and within Guinea there's four operating mines, and two of them have been going for more than 25 years. There's a long history of gold mining in Guinea, and there's emerging projects like Bankan and others that are approaching towards development and production as well. There's also been an emergence of more exploration within the country recently, given the high prospectivity of the region. What all of this means is that mining is important for Guinea.
It's a driver of jobs, it's a driver of the economy, and we can see from that bottom right-hand chart there that it has been driving significant growth in the country in recent times, and this is expected to continue as the mining industry develops further. If I can borrow a quote from the African Development Bank for a second there, the Guinean economy is one of the most resilient in West Africa, so it's a good place to be doing business. Moving on to the Bankan Gold Project itself, as I mentioned, we completed a Definitive Feasibility Study about a month ago, and that DFS envisaged the mining of our NEB and BC deposits, which are located down here in the southern part of the permit package. The NEB deposit has the bulk of our ore reserve. It's got 2.75 million ounces of the 2.95 million ounce ore reserve.
As I mentioned, this is one of the largest gold development projects in Africa. The production profile of 250,000 ounces per annum over 12 years is exceptional. We've got very competitive capital and operating costs. The capital costs of $463 million came in broadly in line with the PFS, which is really encouraging, and it was pleasing to see the all-in sustaining costs reduce relative to the PFS by about 10%, and they come in at $1,057 per ounce in US dollar terms. These, of course, have been developed to a target accuracy of plus or minus 15% in line with the DFS. It's a project that can demonstrate and generate very strong margins. The financials are compelling. We ran a couple of different price cases in the DFS.
One was $2,400 an ounce, which is our base case price forecast, and you can see the financials there in that bottom right-hand orange box. A post-tax project NPV of $1.6 billion US, which equates to about $2.5 billion Aussie dollars, and an IRR of 46%. We also ran a case which was reflective of spot at the time, about $3,300 an ounce, and we see the NPV increased to $2.9 billion U.S. dollars, which is AUD 4.5 billion in Aussie dollar terms, and the IRR increases to 73%. With the NPVs that this project's generating, you can see that there's quite a gap between our market cap of $1 billion and at spot price, we've got an NPV of close to $4.5 billion. That is a compelling opportunity in my view and really sums up what the opportunity is with Predictive Discovery.
Mining of the project is by both underground and open pit methods. You can see here on the right-hand side is our NEB deposit, which is the large-scale deposit. It hosts 3.05 million ounces of the 3.26 million ounces in the DFS mining inventory, and it is a combined open pit and underground mine. We can see in the top left-hand... Excuse me. In the top left-hand corner, we've got the small GBE pit, and then situated about three kilometers to the west, we've got our BC pit, which hosts 200,000 ounces of the mining inventory. An important aspect of the mine schedule in our view is to develop the underground mine at the same time as we're developing the open pit. We're bringing forward the high-grade material that's in that underground mine, and we're also balancing the material types and the production profile over the life of the mine.
How we achieve that is we mine the GBE pit at the start of the construction period. It's then about 15 months to do the underground development to get down to the first stopes, which you can see here in the green shapes here, and that allows us to deliver underground stopes and underground ore to the process plant for the start of production. Overall, the open pit contributes about 2 million ounces at a very attractive stripping ratio of 1.9 to 1 and a grade of 1.39 grams per ton. The underground overall contributes about 1.3 million ounces. The majority of that sits within the ore reserve, the green shape here, and then we've got some inferred underground material that comes in in the back half of the mine plan, which accounts to about 300,000 ounces at 3.3 grams a ton.
Important to acknowledge that we've done these mine designs at a very conservative gold price of $1,800 per ounce. Ore from the mine goes to a 4.5 million-ton per annum processing plant designed by DRA. Importantly, the metallurgy of the ore is very good. It allows a simple and off-the-shelf type gold process flow sheet to be employed and achieving high recoveries of 92.8% over the life of the mine. The production profile is shown here on this slide. You can see on the top chart there it's very consistent over the life of mine. In particular, over the first seven years, it's averaging just over the 250,000 ounces per annum and only ranges between about 237,000 and 272,000 ounces per annum, so it's quite consistent. Generates strong cash flows with that low all-in sustaining cost.
Post-tax net cash flows at the base case gold price of $250 million per annum U.S., and as we increase that price assumption to closer to spot at $3,300, we get about $400 million per annum U.S. in free cash flow. You can see that this project is paying back the $460 million of capital very quickly. At Predictive Discovery, we've got a strong focus on sustainability and ESG. We've been through a rigorous process over the last three or so years to complete an ESIA, an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment, which culminated in that being approved in early 2025 and our Environmental Compliance Certificate also being issued. That represents environmental approval for the project. We're continuing on with our environmental work as we lead up into production.
We're developing all our biodiversity management plans, and we've also committed to do a reforestation program along the border of our exploitation permit boundary during development. Social, we're also progressing with. We're developing our social management plans. We've got community engagement programs which are dedicated towards local employment, local education, and also improving access to water. Importa``ntly, benefits to Guinea and it's substantial. The project generates government revenues of approximately $2 billion over the life of mine, and it creates significant employment opportunities. 1,500 is the pre-construction workforce and 1,100 during the operational phase. Lots of employment opportunities within Guinea itself. Implementation schedule for the project. The next key milestone for us is to secure the exploitation permit, which we're anticipating should be coming through very soon.
We then are targeting to achieve a final investment decision by Q2 2026, and between now and then, which is about a nine-month period, we'll be securing the financing for the project. We're doing various execution readiness activities, early works, engineering, and also some early tendering works. From FID, it's in a two-year construction period where we're building all the infrastructure. We're doing our pre-production mining, including developing the underground, and we're moving into commissioning in early 2028 with first gold production in the second quarter of 2028. The Bankan Gold Project has got a lot of exploration upside. It's in a very prospective jurisdiction and part of the Siguiri Basin margin, which runs through the permit package. I won't go through this in detail.
It's quite a detailed slide here, but what I will say is every intercept that is shown on this slide sits outside the 5.5 million ounce mineral resource. There's great opportunity for us to be finding more gold and adding to the mine life over time and as we progress this project. Wrapping up on Predictive Discovery, we own the Bankan project. It's one of the largest and most exciting gold development projects in Africa. It's large scale. It's long life. It's got compelling economics at base case gold price assumptions of US$2,400 an ounce, and as we increase that closer to spot, we see a post-tax NPV that's many multiples above our current market capitalization. We are on the cusp of receiving our exploitation permit, and there's a significant market re-rating potential as we move forward through the financing and into development and operations.
Thank you very much for listening to the Predictive Discovery story. We think it's a fantastic project and a fantastic opportunity. Please come past the booth and have a chat with us later. Thank you.