Folks, up next we have Ian Bamborough. Ian's the Managing Director of Saturn Metals, and he's a geologist by background. He's had a long-spanning career developed at Newmont, and an interesting thing I didn't know about Ian is that he worked out at Kathleen Valley when they made the Liontown discovery there. That's an interesting fact there, Ian. He presented one time previously at Diggers & Dealers, and a fun fact is Ian breeds Speckle Park beef cattle. There you go at his family farm just north of Perth. Please welcome Ian to the stage, folks. Thank you.
Thanks, Paul. Thank you for the introduction. Thanks to Diggers & Dealers, thanks to everyone for coming and listening. We're working hard to make this asset deposit in front of you Australia's next new operating heap leach gold mine. That's a picture of our crushing plant, which is 10 million tons, just to give people, I suppose, a feel for the scale of the thing and, I suppose, the work we've been putting in in that development pathway. Key point on that slide really is the location at the heart of the Leonora Goldfield, particularly on a trend which is famous for multimillion-ounce deposits owned by Australia's premier gold producers and, in the Leonora, Laverton district, world gold producers there with Gold Fields, Anglo, Genesis, Vault.
We're proud to have found our own multimillion-ounce deposit there, which I'm going to talk you through today, there's a second red blob down at the bottom. If you look at the synchronicity of that field where we're working hard now on Aquarius, which I think will be the next step for the company as well. Strengths on there. After a recent raise, we have about AUD 140 million in the bank. We have a register which is dominated by institutions and we've just seen that strengthen and, I suppose, diversify as well at the same time in the recent raise. After a great last year with some real drill bit discoveries, which we're going to finish the presentation on as well to give you a view of where the deposit's going next.
All our resources are contained in one single, simple, low-strip, large selective mining unit, which means low unit operating cost pit. The dimensions on that thing in front of you are about three kilometers long, 1.2 km wide. It's probably not too different to the last cut back on the Super Pit you see outside there. We have about 2.2 million oz Measured and Indicated, which I think is really going to set us up for our DFS later this year, where we're targeting 2 million oz in that production target. The strip on that pit, if we take a cross-section, is about 1.5:1. Some other strengths on that slide. The width across the ore zones on the pit floor there is 200 to 300 m wide. What that means is, I'm a geologist, but less geologists running around on the pit floor holding production up.
Not that they do that, they help production. I suppose efficiencies in mining that, less dilution, edge effects, the ore outcrops that surface, so it's very easy to start that production. Of course, that low stripping ratio as well. The other thing on there, I suppose, is great conversion from resource to reserve. You see the resource at the bottom, the blocks at the top. Apollo Hill's second strength is probably one of the cleanest, simplest metallurgies I've ever seen working as a geologist for the last 30 years. All the gold is just as grains in quartz only. When we crush that rock, it's easily liberated. Because it's grains, it's easily leached, and that's what's really led us down the heap leach pathway here. We can get excellent recoveries just by crushing alone. Again, lower energy use.
I suppose because the deposit's fresh rock, when we put it on the heap leach pad, great percolation, great heap strength, and all of these things combined together. Metallurgy, because the deposit is probably one of the biggest alteration footprints I've ever seen across just three basic rock types, which are practically chemically identical, physically identical. We see very simple scheduling and ore types, different rock types in those columns represented there over about 28 different tests. Doesn't matter what grade I've got, what rock type I've got, we see a very narrow band of finish in our heap leach recovery curves in a constant time frame. Again, simple scheduling from mine to ROM pad to heap leach pad. Put that all together, we see a big strategic-size asset with a 14-year mine life, full run rate of 106,000 oz per annum.
Since the PFS, which you see in front of you, we've converted all those silver bars as well into measured and indicated now. I think with that bigger resource, which went up 600,000 oz, we'll also see a longer mine life and potential for even bigger throughput and production rate as we move this asset into the future after this sort of first stage of production. That's the heap leach pad. Just a quick look. Flat country, four stacks high, 10 m high. Just to give you a feel for the scale of that thing, it's probably about 1.3 km long. You see the little pipes on the top, which are not too different to your garden reticulation. Very low cyanidation, lime use, cement addition. Again, that fresh rock, which just allows for beautiful heaps pad strength and percolation and real good leachability characteristics.
You put all those things together, you have a very elegant or elegantly simple operation. In terms of cost structure, we can look at an all-in sustaining cost down the bottom, which I think is going to be very competitive. Where this thing really kicks in is if we look at our cost per ton. Because of the economies of scale that we have here and those bigger mining units, we see a very different unit operating cost. What some deposits have in grade, we make back in that lower cost and then a very efficient margin. We produce about 4,300 gold where our study was done, well in line with long-range pricing, about AUD 20 a ton margin. Where the deposit really starts to work is times 10 million tons per annum, forgive my shocking handwriting, equals 200 million per annum free cash flow.
This is very much a margin volume business. Stability, and I suppose a constant process and a constant product onto that heap leach pad, I think will deliver a very stable base from which to grow the company into the future. Our capital breakdown there is about 472 million tons. AUD 470 million. The heap leach pad itself is quite a bit of civils and engineering. Again, this is a 10-million-ton plant, fly-in fly-out operation. We've allowed for a camp, airstrip, all the non-process infrastructure. I suppose the impressive thing really is at an AUD 4,300 gold price, we still see very impressive payback periods of about 2.3 years, IRR of around 50%. Some very bankable metrics and an NPV of just under AUD 1 billion pre-tax.
If we look at today's gold price, I suppose particularly that margin volume equation, we're highly leveraged to that gold price, and we see things move quite quickly. I suppose that looks at the sensitivity analysis from the pre-feasibility study, and I suppose how far we've come from when we did that work to current levels. This is a bit of a look at where we sit in a peer group globally. In terms of the tons of the deposit, in terms of the grade of the deposit, in terms of the actual sizes of the deposit, in terms of ounces, we've arrived in a very special global peer group of low-cost producers. I think we've done our homework on our cost structure, our local cost structure in our studies.
There was very little variance between our PEA and our PFS, I hope that provides good guidance for where we're heading in our definitive feasibility study later this year. Of course, we sit in about the upper quartile of heap leach recovery globally from operating mines. This year's seen us add 600,000 oz. You see the light gray pit is last year's pit, 2025. We're delighted that we've actually added ounces laterally, not at depth. We added a tremendous amount of ounces with our infill drilling within the old pit, never mind the new pit. As we're putting more drilling in, we're seeing excellent conversion and addition, all in the same ounces per cubic meter is where we're really driving our growth within any single pit.
Some of the great things this year, as we stepped out to the north following some sort of structures, we realized that we started to see these trends in the deposit. We were delighted to see them repeat to the north. I think you can see there, 7 at 11, I think we got 4 at 70, including 1 at 273. We're really starting to see some very speccy high grades in some different orientated structures coming out of the deposit. When we look at the exploration intersections, we can see they extend further north and north and north. Our current exploration is really looking at that lateral growth again, where we're looking at those shallow first-in-time ounces into any resource where I think we're going to get the best economic payback.
If I step out on that and we look at that, we've infill drilled, and we really call this footprint drilling, where we're looking to create that bigger picture. There's 3 million oz on that page in front of you, of which we captured 2.8 million oz, and we're now stepping out north. Really a mineralized system. We can see that there. We've seen these structures extend to the south. I suppose one of our shareholders has said to me from your dot, this is a 5-million-oz deposit. I was always very cautious what I said, particularly when I got on a stage like this. Nowadays, caution to the wind, and we're going and drilling hard in this zone to keep growing this asset into the future and perhaps even expand production potential.
This year, we also saw some great high-grade trends appear in the south and the north. As we stepped out to the north and someone said to me, "Oh, that's underground potential." I said, "Well, before it's underground potential, it's going to be open pit potential." Again, showing the real strengths of this asset. Last but not least, I suppose we've been exploring the region for the last eight, nine years. There's about 16 prospects outside of Apollo Hill there that we've been working on. A couple of them have got legs. We'll go back and drill them again. We were delighted this year to get this ground granted to the south in the yellow. That was previously held by Sumitomo Metal Mining, who did a fantastic job at finding about 26 km strike length in air core drilling of a really nice gold system.
I'd actually call it a gold camp. We were delighted this year, after our traditional owner agreement, to be able to get access to that and to be able to start exploring it. Just to put it in context, I suppose all we've talked about today really is Apollo Hill, and it's so far 2.8 resource, 2.8 million oz. I think this trend down the south really shows something special and is, if you want, our next brownfields opportunity for the company, irrespective of the greenfields opportunity you see elsewhere in that region, where 40% of that tenement package hasn't even had a drill result. In the few places Sumitomo did drill underneath, I'm delighted to say that worked. We did see some fantastic intersections forming some very nice-looking cross-sections. There's about three cross-sections there where the guys have done some good work.
It's five kilometers between there and there. A lot of work to do onto that footprint and I think a tremendous amount of opportunity as can Saturn be a two-mine producer in the future? I believe it will after we get in there and do some hard work as we've been used to. In the meantime, the last three months have seen a significant resource upgrade. We've had our mining lease granted after working with our traditional owner partners on the mining access agreement. We're on track for a reserve update and our definitive or bankable feasibility study later this year. Our submissions for environmental approvals are just about to go in, I suppose really what this slide is a call to action to join us on the development path for what I think is going to be a long-life, strategically sized gold mine in Australia.
I think some fantastic exploration potential already showing and even yet to be discovered with the drill bit. Thank you very much for listening