Africa, in the premier jurisdiction in West Africa. We've had control of the Afema project now for just a little over two years. We've grown that project dramatically from what we inherited of about a 1.5 million ounce resource base to what is today 4.6 million ounces. We've also not only been growing that resource base, but doing a lot of feasibility work. We completed a PFS, which I'll take you through, a couple of months ago, and we'll be completing a DFS in April next year and be kicking off the construction of the project basically this time next year. We're capitalized at around about AUD 900 million. We're funded through to completion of the DFS and the FID with about AUD 50 million in the bank. As we've grown this project very quickly, obviously the shareholder base has grown with the company.
Now I'd say the institutional shareholding within the company is probably around 50%. But still management is still the single largest individual shareholder in the company with around about 6% to 7% of the company. You can see there reasonable coverage from well-known brokerages. As I touched on, resource, we've quite regularly been updating that resource basically every six months since we've acquired the project. We've been adding over a million ounces every year to the resource. That last resource of 4.6 million ounces came out with the PFS a few months ago in June, and is now out of date. We've put a series of drill results out since that resource, which were all extensional drilling results. We're in the process of updating that resource now.
You'll see a similar growth of around about half a million ounces every six months being added to that resource. But importantly, we've been drilling economic ounces, so very much an iterative process as we run pit optimizations, infill our pits, drill extensions, come back and infill. That allowed us, as part of our PFS that we've just recently completed, to put out a maiden reserve statement of around about 2 million ounces. We ran our reserves at a pretty conservative gold price of AUD 2,000 an ounce, so we could get a lot more ounces in these pits if we wanted to. We obviously wanted to maintain, then maximize the margin and minimize the all-in sustaining cost, which is around about AUD 1,500-AUD 1,600 all in, including royalties, depending on the gold price there.
With the capital development cost of around about AUD 450 million, it has an NPV of well over AUD 2 billion depending on the gold price. But most importantly, has a payback of around about 12 months at a AUD 3,500 gold price. At today's gold price, the payback will be around about nine or 12 months time. Importantly, we sit on a mining license, as you'll see. So we're already permitted from that perspective, and we've actually just in the throes of completing our ESIA to get an updated environmental certificate, which we're expecting to receive, if not by the end of the year, early in 2027. Then the project will be permitted and ready to be developed, subject to a final definitive feasibility study, which as I said, will be completed in April and a FID around mid-year.
As I said before, Côte d'Ivoire is unquestionably the premier jurisdiction in West Africa. But importantly for us, we're not only in the best country in West Africa, we're in the best part of that country down the south there. You can see our project area in red, yellow, and the central red area is our granted mining permit with all our resource sits within the perimeter of that granted mining permit. Those that don't know, Côte d'Ivoire is by far and away the most developed country within West Africa, has the greatest infrastructure. In fact, it exports electricity across its border. 95% of the population sits on the electrical grid. And one of those hydro dams that feed into that electrical grid sits 32 km away from where we're looking at building our process plant.
Quite modest capital cost of around AUD 20 million-AUD 25 million to bring a power line and substation in from that, straight off that dam, which has got 99% reliability, and then be operating off AUD 0.14 a kWh power. You can see the road there. When we arrived, that Bituminous Road was actually being constructed by the government that runs straight through our project. Our plant will be about 4 km off that Bituminous Road and our main deposit, the Woulo Woulo deposit, which is the cornerstone of our development, sits about 2 km off that road. No big capital cost associated with access. As I said before, no villages to relocate, which is quite a unique thing with a project in Africa.
Also importantly, in West Africa, being in the south, as secure as you can be from an operations, and we have no security requirements on site. From a geological perspective, the project basically covers the extension of Ghanaian geology into the southeast corner of Côte d'Ivoire. And you can see there in Ghana we have two main belts, the Ashanti Belt out to the east and the Sefwi Belt out to the west, which extends across the border. And we've expanded our project area now to be 1,600 sq km of contiguous ground. In fact, I'd say it's the largest contiguous holding of anyone has in Côte d'Ivoire. And we basically control, I would say, 90% of that world-class Sefwi Belt as it's mapped in Côte d'Ivoire there.
To date, our focus has really been only along one structure, which is what we call the Afema-Bibiani-Chirano Shear, which marks the eastern boundary of that greenstone belt and the Kumasi Sedimentary Basin that you can see in gray there. We haven't even started looking inboard into the belt itself, where we have significantly large, very high tenor anomalies that we'll start to drill, step out and start to drill those targets over the next 12-18 months. I'm very confident of having further discovery success. Our resource is not made up of a single deposit, albeit what has transformed this project has been the discovery of the Woulo Woulo deposit, which now sits at 1.7 million ounces. There was no resource on that two years ago. We're still drilling on that, and I think that's got a huge amount of legs to go.
You will see results coming from that over the next couple of months. That is the cornerstone of our asset and we will be mining about 4 million tons a year coming out of that Woulo Woulo deposit at a strip ratio of about 3: 1. That will be supplemented by higher grade coming out of these shear-hosted deposits along the Afema Shear there that you can see along the boundary of the greenstone belt and the sedimentary basin. Starting with the Anuiri deposits, which are around 2 g reserves in pit, which will be supplementing that 1 g coming out of Woulo Woulo to give us around about 220,000 ounces per annum of production.
As we mine those, we then move on to the other deposits such as Begnopan, which is only small but we have actually put out several results there, and that is growing substantially, and the Asupiri deposit at the back end of the schedule there. This is a genuine gold camp. Then there is significant amount of strike along that Afema Shear that has not seen a drill hole yet, but has significant soil anomalism associated with it. We are very confident of finding more of these Anuiri, Asupiri type deposits as we step along strike there. We have touched through the PFS, we just rehash that. A 6 million tonne per annum operation was our study based on.
Most importantly, the key aspects of the PFS being the resource estimate and the metallurgy is all done to a definitive level, and that allows us to move through to a definitive feasibility study very quickly. Most importantly, have a very high level of confidence in these numbers. All the resources that sit within that mine plan are drilled on 20 m- 30 m spacing, and we have done a huge amount of metallurgical variability test work across all of the deposits there. It is really about optimizing our throughput and then doing a bit of geotech and hydrogeology drilling on it just to confirm some of those param, and then wrap that up in a DFS in early new year. We are producing around about 200,000 ounces a year, but a bit earlier as we mine those high-grade deposits such as Anuiri, around about 215,000 ounces.
I think you will see us expand the throughput on this as part of our DFS and get that production more up around 250,000 ounces a year. You can see the economics, obviously, at today's gold price, it is pretty compelling with a payback of less than 10 months. It is pretty much a no-brainer. I will not take you through those numbers. Capital costs, as I said, the location of this project really gives us an advantage in the capital. We do not have any villages to relocate, which can be a huge capital cost and time delay on developing a project. Proximal to the power line, so it is not a huge capital cost associated with that. Because we are mining really three deposits at any one time, the Woulo Woulo and a couple of deposits along the Afema Shear.
We don't have any pre-strip, all our deposits are sitting at surface, so there's just a small amount of pre-production mining to build up a stockpile to keep the mill full. Just running through the deposits quickly. Woulo Woulo. You can see here this is a significant discovery. We've drilled this over 3 km in strike length, and it has an average width of over that 3 km of 40 m- 50 m. So it's a big bulk zone of mineralization. You can see our resource pit-constrained shell there, which only extends down to 270 m vertical. Metallurgically, this is very clean. At 75 micron grind size, we get 93% recovery in the oxide, 90% recovery in the fresh, and pretty much no change in those recoveries if we coarsen that grind to 106 micron.
All of our PFS work to date has been based on that finer grind of 75 micron there. When we optimize this at a AUD 2,000 gold price, we get a million-ounce reserve that we put out as part of our PFS as a set of strip ratio of 3: 1, and that's all drilled on 30 m- 40 m spacing. What's interesting about this deposit is we've only drilled it to 270 m. Even in a West African sense, this is a major discovery of 3 km of a 50 m wide ore body. It's only constrained by drilling at depth. Since the PFS, we embarked on doing some deeper drilling, and you can see in the central northern part of that pit, the reddish, brighter colored zones, which represent a very high-grade zone within that 3 km strike.
Which itself has a strike of about 700 m-800m . We stepped out another 250 m down dip. So twice the vertical extent on that with one single drill hole. We demonstrated the ore body continues. We got 100 m at 1.1 g per tonne. But importantly, within that, about 20-odd may of the resource there, which sits within a rhyolite unit. You can see a subtle flexure in the dip of the mineralization there. There's also a jog in the strike of the mineralization, which we think is controlling this 700 m long plunging chute that has probably 20 m-30 m of true width at 2 g- 5 g per tonne. With one single drill hole, we've already demonstrated we've got 250 m vertical extent to that. So you can put some numbers around that. There's a serious number of ounces potentially sitting there.
We've got to re-drilling some deeper holes there now, and you'll see some results shortly from that. Woulo Woulo not only will expand as an open pit, but I think you'll see real underground grade potential here. You can see that just sitting off the southern end of this, what we see an Induced Polarization survey, a resistive response there. You can see where our deposits sit along the margin of the belt with the shales there in purple there. Running up the middle there in silvery blue is a sandstone conglomerate unit, a Tarkwaian unit. That's a key controlling feature of these higher grade shear-hosted deposits sitting along this shear.
We've got 25 km of strike on this, and it's basically continuously mineralized on both the hanging wall and the footwall of that unit, and really has only been certain areas drilled which have delivered just along that shear itself, about 3 million ounces of gold already. We haven't even drilled a hole really beneath 200 m yet. Looking at some of these deposits quickly along the shear here. You see the Anuiri deposit. It's only been drilled down to about 200 m and 250 m. What I'd point out is you can see these brighter colored zones. We get these repeating high-grade plunging shoots. At Anuiri, we've drilled it across a strike length of about 1.5 km. You can see within that, probably three high-grade shoots for us to chase down plunge with some deeper drilling there, which we're just starting to embark on.
Plenty of growth to go beyond the pit, and this will obviously with grades that will carry underground here. I think the first hole we drilled at Anuiri was 30 m at 8 gs per ton. You look at the Asupiri deposit, which sits right next door on a parallel structure to Anuiri, only 1 kilometer away. Both these deposits are within 5 km of the Woulo Woulo deposit, which is where we're looking at obviously building a plant, given the majority of the tons that come out of that. It's a very low tracking cost. Here at Asupiri, this resource stood at barely 200,000 ounces 12 months ago, just in the oxide in the top 30 m- 40 m.
We've been progressively chasing these higher grade zones and still only drilled it down to barely much more than 150 m, and we've added 1 million ounces to this over the last 12 months to put it at 1.3 million ounces. Importantly, we haven't stopped there. A month or so ago, we put out some more extensional drilling results. Bearing in mind that everything comes into our pit is already drilled out to reserve here. Just from extensions outside those reserves, we got 15 m at 4.7, 15 m at 3.6, 60 odd m at just over a g per ton there. You can see that 1.3 million ounces, it's going to continue to grow, and importantly, the reserve will continue to grow there. We've still got a rig here drilling, and so you'll see further results from this Adiopan area.
Begnopan is another area, the third area that we're currently drilling at the moment. This really sat where Asupiri sat 12 months ago. Just a modest couple hundred thousand ounces of resources there, predominantly sitting in the oxide zone. We've embarked on, firstly, an infill prog because it didn't sit in our PFS reserve to convert those inferred ounces to indicated, which we've completed now. That drilling has just continued on as we've drilled extensions and got really good results that you could see here, like 11 m at 4.3, 15 m at 3.4, 20 odd m at 2 gs. Very much more of the same there. We're still barely drilling here less than beyond 100 m vertical depth. You can see every one of our deposits is going to continue to grow.
And that's why we're confident of continuing to grow this resource at the rate that we've been growing it at. That's sort of half a million ounces every six months. We'll have a new resource estimate out in November, which will reflect that growth, which will then feed into our definitive feasibility study. But then as we come back into the dry season in Côte d'Ivoire, which is really sort of November, December onwards, we'll start stepping out further afield, looking for further discoveries. And you can see the extent of our soil coverage here across our permit area. You can see basically the soil anomalism to the south, and that's basically what I've just run through. It's currently 4.6 million ounces, predominantly sitting within that area there.
You can see the soil anomalism to the north as we move along strike along the Afema Shear off our mining license in red there onto our adjoining exploration license there. Targets such as Kofakro, Kotoka, haven't seen drill hole yet. We have soil anomalism of 100, 200 parts per billion consistently over several km there. Sitting within the Sefwi belt, a belt that hosts deposits like Ahafo across the border in Ghana and Bibiani, Chirano, et cetera. So we're very confident that this project will continue to grow with further discoveries, not just resource extensions. So looking forward, as I said, our drilling will very much remain a focus. We've done all the infill drilling, done all the metallurgical drilling for samples. We've done most of the geotech drilling. We've only got a few thousand m to go.
So with four rigs drilling on site, about 8,000-10,000 m per month, that will be very much focused on resource extensions and exploration, and that will continue unabated going forward. But whilst we're doing that, we're very keen obviously to develop the project as quickly as possible. So our ESIA is now complete. Looking to have that project fully permitted in the first quarter of next year. A DFS will be completed early in the second quarter of next year, making a FID in around the end of the second quarter next year. And be on the ground, pouring concrete around about November after the wet season in Côte d'Ivoire. So thanks very much and happy to take any questions.
Thanks, Justin. Great presentation. Do we have any questions? Close to the coast with this particular operation?
No, we are still probably more than 30 km away from the coast there. It is actually relevant point on that. Soils are very effective throughout the project area, but as we move to the coast, we get a bit of transport and cover. The Woulo Woulo deposit itself is under a thin veneer of cover. The deposit itself sticks out through that cover. But that cover within our project area is only about 7 m-10 m. But that masks what we think are some parallel structures around Woulo Woulo, and there is potential to find other Woulo Woulo deposits right next door. But as we move south, that cover thickens up, but that is off our project area. That has no impact. Also we are in no protected areas or anything like that.
Questions? Questions? Maybe one from me, Justin. Just at a high level, I wonder if you could chat a little bit about the range of funding options that you might be considering for the project.
Yeah, we are pretty vanilla. We are just proving up the project. We have AUD 50 million. We are spending about AUD 8 million a quarter, but most of that is on drilling, exploration drilling. That is discretionary, but that will continue. We are really funded through to a FID. The capital cost of around AUD 450 million, but with a payback of 12 months, it is going to support a significant amount of debt funding for the development. Yeah, we will have to raise some more equity to develop the project. But I do not think it will be very dilutive off our current market cap of AUD 900 million.
Sure. Okay, great. All right. Well, thank you very much, Justin.
Thank you.