Welcome to Virtual Investor Conferences. On behalf of OTC Markets, we are very pleased you have joined us for Australian Rare Earths and Critical Minerals Conference. Our next presentation of the day is from Tungsten Mining. Please note you may submit questions for the presenter in the box to the left of the slides. You can also view a company's availability for one-on-one meetings by clicking "Book a Meeting" in the top toolbar. At this point, I am very pleased to welcome Gary Lyons, Non-Executive Chairman of Tungsten Mining, which trades on the OTCQB venture market under the symbol TGNMF and on ASX under the symbol TGN. Welcome, Gary.
Thank you, Lily, and good morning, everybody. Welcome to Tungsten Mining. I look forward to sharing and highlighting the key aspects of our recently delivered Mount Mulgine Scoping study. It was released to the market on the 6th of November, so it's a little less than two weeks old. The study highlighted the global significance of the Mount Mulgine project and, in particular, the incredible financial outcomes that it delivers, and which I am delighted to share with you today. This is the usual disclaimer which needs to be shown. However, I won't dwell on it. I can ensure you that its contents are not unusual and, in fact, are typical disclosure protocols. In terms of our corporate snapshot, the company has just under one billion shares on issue. Our last traded price was $0.094, a close yesterday, the 18th.
Our market capitalization is $98 million, also as of yesterday, and our cash balance is some $7 million U.S. Apologies for the Australian dollar remark there. Why invest in Tungsten? What we've seen in recent times has been rocketing prices to all-time highs, particularly the last 12 months. Looking at the chart in the bottom right hand, you'll see that back in 2020, the tungsten concentrate price was approximately $200 per MTU, and MTU is the equivalent of 22.2 pounds. Today, the price has skyrocketed to some $689 per 22.2 pounds or per MTU. Significant upside that equates to almost $70,000 per ton.
Tungsten was added to the critical minerals export restriction list by China and by Russia in February of this year, and that's created a deepening supply deficit, the geopolitical tailwinds that's being created with China controlling some 80% of tungsten concentrate production and Russia a further 10%. Back in 2020, when prices were at a low of around $200, it was a disincentivized further investment into new tungsten assets. We have seen very little new supply being contemplated, let alone come on stream. Current demand is around 90,000 tons per annum globally, and the compound annual growth rate for tungsten is around 7.8% per annum for the next eight years. I'm not so sure that I support the theory that we'll see a doubling of demand in terms of tons, but I am certain that the demand for tungsten is increasing.
Our concern is where the new supply will come from. What we're seeing is supply moving off as mines are being depleted in the Western world, and it's created this deepening supply deficit. In terms of usage for tungsten, the obvious one that people refer to is defense. It only accounts for about 8% of tungsten demand globally, but transport industries, mineral and construction, earth moving, industrial uses are other big users, as well as pharmaceutical and consumer durables, and indeed energy. Put in simple terms, without tungsten, aeroplanes don't fly, without tungsten, motorcars don't get driven, and without tungsten, your partner's birthday present doesn't get delivered by Amazon. This slide depicts some of the larger global tungsten assets found in the Western world outside of China. The red highlighted assets are those that belong to Tungsten Mining and rank as globally important.
The two largest assets are Canadian-based, so they're large tons, and indeed MacTung in Canada is of a very good grade, whilst the other Canadian asset is extremely low grade and likely to be uneconomic. The largest asset, the MacTung asset, is held by Fireweed Metals. That's listed on NASDAQ as well as the TSX, and they are in a development mode. They put funding aside to advance the development of the MacTung asset, but they themselves predict that they're some five to seven years away from production. Our projects sit in combined. We have three projects in Australia, which I'll introduce you to. This collectively is ranked number three. Some of the others that may well be known to you, ranked eighth, is Nui Phao. That's a Vietnamese asset owned by Masan Resources.
This particular asset has been the largest producer outside of China, accounting for around 9,000 tons of production of tungsten concentrate per annum. Their resource has been depleted, and their forecast for 2026 is that their production will fall, and it'll fall significantly to around two and a half thousand tons, creating a further void or deficit of approximately 7,000 tons per annum. Ranked 12 is Sangdong. Sangdong is a South Korean asset that's held by a group called Almonty Industries. Almonty is listed on the NASDAQ, as well as the ASX and TSX. It has a market capitalization of approximately USD 2.6 billion at this juncture. Sangdong itself is anticipated to commence production in 2026, although we understand there are some environmental issues that might hold that back, but it is our firm belief that there will be production in 2026. Apologies for the bubble chart on the left.
There seems to be a large congregation there, but I'll cover this in a little more detail as we move on. These are Tungsten Mining assets. We have three in Australia. They are all open cut. None of them are underground. In Far North Queensland, we have the Watershed project, which had a defined feasibility study completed back in 2014, and that was done at a price of $400 per 22.2 pounds. In the center of Australia, in the Northern Territory, a place called Hatches Creek, we have a project. It's somewhat smaller, but was operated during the First and Second World War for munition supplies. In the left-hand side portion of the map of Australia sits Western Australia and Mount Mulgine. Mount Mulgine is where our largest asset lies. It is globally significant.
It sits in a tier one mining jurisdiction that is 330 km north-northeast of the state's capital, Perth, and approximately 150 mi inland from a deep-sea port of Geraldton, directly east or due east of Geraldton. We've invested significant amounts in this asset since we've begun exploring it some nine years ago. We've completed more than 370,000 ft of drilling, and if our exploration department got there, they'd be continuing to drill, but the message has clearly been sent out to them to leave some of the resource in the ground so that at some point in time we can mine it. Not only is Mount Mulgine large, it's what we term as being a polymetallic deposit. It doesn't just contain one critical mineral in the tungsten, it contains two. The second one is molybdenum.
The polymetallic nature is that it also hosts copper, gold, and silver, so a number of base metals to boot. The results of the scoping study, if we start to have a look at some of the financial metrics, our initial startup development case is for 6 million tons of processing per annum. It'll be long life, low cost, and high value. We'll commence at 6 million tons, but our aim is and always has been to move quite quickly to large-scale production, which is pitched at 15 million tons per annum. I mentioned the polymetallic nature of the deposit at Mount Mulgine and the pricing that's been adopted for this NPV and for this scoping study, what we term as being base prices, which are considerably lower than the current cost prices, and I'll explain those, and I'll show you that differential through the course of the presentation.
If we turn our attention to the gray tab in the center of the screen, CapEx for the 6 million ton per annum project will range between $233 million and $322 million. This is a range that's based upon a conservative and an aggressive approach. Conservative means a higher cost. Aggressively, where we're looking to trim the capital expenditure, would be the $233 million. In relation to that and relative to that, the NPV, which is discounted at 8%, will use the same references. At the top of that tab, the NPV ranges from $650 million to $910 million. The aggressive rate being $233 million investment in CapEx will deliver $910 million NPV, and of course, the more conservative would be $650 million. That's at base prices, as I referenced.
If we were to adopt the spot prices of those commodities, then that range would be between $1.56 billion NPV and $1.82 billion. The IRR using base metal prices would be 30%-45%, using spot prices 51%-71%. In terms of operating costs, the range for those is $16.50- $20 per ton of ore. In terms of cash flow across the life of mine, and this is post-tax basis, would range from $1.29 billion- $1.66 billion. An annual free cash life of mine, again post-tax, will range between $67 million and $83 million. An incredibly short payback period of between 2.2 and 3.8 years from the commencement of production. A very low strip ratio, which means that 0.8 to 1, which means that essentially every ton that we're mining is being processed.
Adopting the 6 million ton per annum development case gives us a 23-year mine life at that rate. The next slide is not a repeat of that slide. It's just showing the financial metrics that are delivered by a 15 million ton per annum operation, again using the same references. The CapEx in this case would be aggressive $410 million and conservative $564 million. Adopting that delivers an NPV at base commodity prices of $1.1 billion-$1.5 billion, and at spot prices, $2.5 billion-$2.9 billion NPV using the spot prices. The IRR, the rate of return based on the base prices, is 42%-62%, and the spot price is a massive 69%-93% return. Operating costs, of course, fall due to economies of scale and volume down to $14-$17 per ton.
In terms of cash flow, total cash flow life of mine is $1.39 billion-$1.77 billion, and annual free cash flow ranging from $179 million-$221 million. An incredibly short payback period of some 1.6-2.2 years from the commencement of production. Again, the strip ratio doesn't change, but mine life based on 15 million tons per annum reduces to some 10 years. Just excuse me a second. This slide depicts our resources. If I could turn your attention to the bottom part of the chart, our global resources total a massive 328 million tons. That contains some 383,000 tons of tungsten concentrate, which at today's price in ground is some $35 billion in the tungsten concentrate alone. Molybdenum, we have some 70,000 tons, a little over a million ounces of gold, 44 million ounces of silver, and some 125,000 tons of copper.
That's our global resources. If we look at the top part of the chart, this reference is purely Mulgine, what we refer to as Mulgine Trench, and remember this is one massive pit, and it contains some 247 million tons of resource, and of that, 270,000 tons of the tungsten concentrate is contained in Mulgine Trench, and just about all of the rest of the metals that make up that polymetallic resource are hosted in that deposit. You can see it is a massive, massive deposit. We refer to it as being bigger than the state of Texas.
In terms of production, annual production of metals, you can see a little under 1,200 tons of molybdenum is produced per annum, 1,300 tons of copper, a little more than 4,500 tons of tungsten concentrate, around 9,600 ounces of gold, I wish it was tons, and a little over 500,000 ounces of silver. The bottom right-hand pick depicts the three stages of our Mulgine Trench pit. Stage one being approximately 30 million tons, stage two a further 30 million tons, and then stage three is some 76 million tons, totaling 136 million tons. The maximum depth of our pit in the center would be some 250 meters, and the exploration upside that I've referenced is that at both ends and at depth, all drilling remained in mineralization.
We're about to announce an exploration target to expand that already incredibly large resource holding that we have at Mount Mulgine, and that announcement will be released in the coming days. This is our flowsheet. It's conventional. It's rather simple. It starts with a three-stage crushing process on the left-hand side, moving right into a primary gravity concentration, and then into sulfide flotation where the pyrites, the copper, gold, silver, and molybdenum will head north and be floated out, whilst the tungsten product will sink to the bottom of the bulk sulfide flotation, move through a magnetic separation, which actually delivers another product, which is a byproduct. It's actually in the form of iron ore. It's a magnetite iron ore that's extremely high grade in the high 60% .
From there, the tungsten product will move into a secondary gravity separation, which is the black square in the center, and then onto what's referred to as scheelite flotation, and then it'll move into a scheelite concentration in the green box there. We'll produce three products effectively. A tungsten concentrate, a tungsten scheelite concentrate, that is, a molybdenum concentrate, and then a copper, gold, and silver concentrate. In terms of recoveries, we're able to liberate 72.5% of the tungsten, some 70% of the molybdenum, 41% of gold, 47% of silver, and 62% of the copper. In terms of our site and infrastructure, we will use gas-fired power generation and the addition of renewable energy resources, and there is a potential for a solar microgrid solution too.
Water, we need water, roughly 2.4-3.6 gigaliters per annum at the 6 million ton processing capacity, and we'll derive that water from fractured rock and paleochannel systems within the region, and then there are some it'll be supplemented by other regional basin systems in close proximity. In terms of transport and logistics, I mentioned we're approximately 155 mi due east of the Port of Geraldton and within driving distance. The value of our product, roughly a 20-ft ocean-going container, a 20-ft FCL, has a value of about $2 million, and we anticipate that we'll move one of those to the Port of Geraldton each day of the week, so seven per week.
In terms of the workforce, there's a small resource available to us in local townships close to the tenements, the assets, and then we'll use Dido or drive-in, drive-out for our American friends from that city and the Port of Geraldton, and then fly-in, fly-outs from the capital city of Perth. This depicts our site layout and some of the infrastructure. It's pretty simple, and I'll keep it simple. The pink oval shape in the top left is our Mulgine Trench pit that sits at that 150 million tons that I mentioned. Due south of that is the plant infrastructure, and further south, the round component there is the tailings dam, which initially is 60 million tons, and due east of there is the accommodation, the camp for housing the workforce.
Opportunity exists to leverage off existing infrastructure in the region, such as airstrips and accommodation, and we anticipate that during construction we'll take full advantage of some of those temporary facilities. This proves or supports the cost profile and provides a little more detail surrounding some of the financial inputs. The CapEx there is for that base case, the $233 million-$322 million. Some of the financial inputs you haven't been introduced to yet are the discount rate you have at 8%. The company tax rate here is 30%. There'll be a capital waste expense in the first year only of 30%. We've adopted a foreign exchange rate of AUD 1 equals $0.65 throughout this entire study, and the government take a royalty of some 5%.
I'll then draw your attention to the bottom right-hand corner of this slide, which shows the base commodity prices that we adopted for our scoping study. Tungsten, you'll see, was $425 for that per MTU or for 22.2 pounds, and today, you may recall from an earlier slide, the current rate is some $689 per MTU. Molybdenum, $23 a pound, gold, $3,100 per ounce, silver, $38.50 an ounce, and copper, $4.60 per pound. This actually shows the variance that's delivered from the base prices and the spot prices. The two columns there, the red component at the base outlines the initial NPV, the conservative and aggressive, you'll recall, at $652 million and $920 million more aggressive. That's the lower CapEx.
The blue section at the top of the column, that is the difference between the base metal prices and the spot prices, and you can see just how significant that range is and just how conservative we've been in pricing and developing the scoping study. To the right-hand side, you'll see the spot prices that we've used. Apologies, the tungsten ones now are a little old. It was the 23rd of October in this particular slide. It is 689. Molybdenum is $25.30, not a significant cushion. Gold is significant. There's $1,000 difference between the base price and indeed the spot price. Silver, there's quite a margin there and only a small margin between base and spot prices for copper. Here's another way of showing the cash flow.
Apologies for the colors, they're a bit close, but at the bottom of this chart, you'll see the base prices result in $1.7 billion of cash flow, and then the section at the top, the pinkish section, is what the spot prices deliver in addition is another $1.5 billion for a total of $3.2 billion in cash flow. Extremely strong cash flow. The bottom left-hand corner depicts the payback, 2.2 years from commencement of production if we adopt the base prices and indeed a payback of 1.3 years if we use current spot. A bit of a sensitivity analysis, but before I get to that, the pie chart on the left-hand side shows where our revenue stream comes from.
58% of our revenue is generated from tungsten, 19% from molybdenum, so that's 77% from those two critical minerals, and then the base metal concentrate of copper, gold, and silver is responsible for some 23% of our revenue. On the right-hand side is the sensitivity analysis. You can see that quite simply it is sensitive to the FX rate, to Forex, also to the tungsten recovery and, of course, the tungsten price. What it isn't sensitive to is movements in capital cost or indeed mining operations, which is very, very pleasing to us. Some opportunities, the resource growth I've mentioned, an announcement that'll be coming out shortly in regards to that potential. We have the ability to optimize our current processing flowsheet and indeed to optimize some of our mining processes.
I mentioned the magnetite potential that exists that's extracted through magnetic separation during the process. The infrastructure strategies, I think I've covered those. Commercially, we're being contacted almost daily, but at least weekly, from different offtake partners looking to secure offtake, and it will become one of our focuses. We've not dealt with our offtake at all, and it is significant, and indeed looking at targeting project support from governments, both local in terms of state, federal, and also from U.S. government, so engaging with Department of War and Energy, amongst others. Here is our development timeline, and if we start in the left, scoping study Q3 of 2025, that's now almost two weeks old. The pre-feasibility study has been fast-tracked. We commenced that actually before we completed the scoping study, once we started to realize just what the financial outcomes really were.
We'll finish that by Q2 of 2026, and we'll move directly into the DFS, the definitive feasibility study, which will complete Q3 of 2027, and then we'll move into FID, and then transition into engineering procurement and construction in Q1 of 2028, and we'll commence pre-production mining somewhere between Q3 and Q4 of 2028. Production is anticipated to commence in the second semester of 2029, and we have incentivized our entire workforce to fast-track this and bring it forward at all cost. Some of our upcoming catalysts announcements, I've included two or three that we have achieved in recent times. They're the ones on the left with the ticks, the scoping study, commencement of the PFS. We listed on the OTCQB around three weeks ago. We've appointed U.S. brokers and lobbyists and advisors. We'll shortly release that resource exploration target I've mentioned.
Engaging with offtake partners and strategic and technical partners will commence at the beginning of 2026, as will critical minerals offices of both the U.S. and Australia. Completion of the Mount Mulgine PFS I've mentioned. Potential Nasdaq listing, it's been well performed part of our agenda to list on the Nasdaq exchange, and we're pitching that for Q3 2026, even though I think we could potentially fast-track that or bring it forward to Q2. It's pitched for Q3 2026, then commencement of the Mulgine DFS and completion of the DFS and final investment decision at the end of 2027. This is where you can really see the value when comparing Tungsten Mining to our peers, and I've elected to use two listed entities that are in production. One, I mentioned Almonty, which is listed on the Nasdaq.
They have a contained reserve tons of tungsten concentrate of approximately 51,500 tons, and their EV reserve, and I apologize, this is still listed in Australian dollars, but I've converted it, and I'll just look at my note. The EV is some $36,263 per ton of tungsten concentrate in reserve. EQ Resources are producing in Europe as well as small scale in Australia. They have some 33,800 tons of tungsten concentrate in reserve, and their EV is some $4,093 per ton. Tungsten Mining, a massive portfolio of almost 180,000 tons of tungsten concentrate in reserve, and an EV, little old EV, of some $267. I think you can see the opportunity and the value uplift that Tungsten Mining offers very clear. Our board, a well-experienced board that's currently being reviewed, but some of our board members sit across a number of listed entities.
Some have got tungsten experience and steelmaking experience, and they're a well-seasoned, well-credentialed board that's well-known throughout Australia. And that's me. I thank you very much indeed for listening to the Tungsten Mining story. I hope you subscribe to it, and it's been a pleasure delivering this to you, and I'll be delighted to answer any questions there may be if any time is left.