Yes. Thank you, Brett, and good morning to everyone. Thanks to the organizers of Diggers and Dealers for the opportunity to speak here today. Waratah, we're a mineral resource exploration company. We have a discovery happening in an area near Orange in Western New South Wales. It's a fantastic discovery. Today, I think is about talking about the discoveries being made. It's about how big this system can be. We have one of the largest drill programs going on the East Coast of Australia at the moment, with 12 rigs and expanding. I think this story is something that's happening rapidly. There's a lot of fortitude from the team here at Waratah that we're onto a serious discovery. We're showing that with the drill bit, putting the activity in the ground, and we've got very supportive shareholders.
Exploration's a wonderful business, and when executed well, it delivers enormous value to everyone. It's a pretty simple business. The idea is put together a good team, have a good project, and deliver a discovery. That's a discovery that has economic value. Value creation is very important. At Waratah, we have that discovery. We're trying to work out how big it is, and by the end of this presentation, you'll understand that. We've got a team that's done it before, a team that's done it globally, and a team that has not only the exploration skills, the community engagement, but also the commercial skills to deliver value to shareholders, and that's really important. We're about exploration. It's a very important process, but this is about discovery.
You can look at rocks, you can do things, but only a small percentage of the geologists out there exploring things actually find real deposits. That's really important. We know what we're delivering. We have a clear strategy. It's all about low discovery costs. The more rigs you can put on these projects, the more aggressive you can get. You lower those discovery costs, and you deliver the value to your shareholders. Last year, we announced a discovery hole at our Consols project. It was a great hole, over 200 meters, one gram. It was a hole that got drilled three times . It kept finishing in gold. This week, we announced some RC drilling, and that was quite significant because what we now know is we have a system starting in the south at Spur, moving up to Consols. We're going to Gazzards, Alpine in the north.
That RC drilling has delivered the same results that you'd see drilling Spur or Consols, and it's really significant. Those drill holes include eight meters at three grams, 17 at one, and 15 at over one from very shallow depths. What we're seeing is a system that is growing over 6 km of strike now, showing similar characteristics as it is at Spur Consols and moving up to the north. For us, consolidating that district, now exploring it's a very systematic approach of stepping out, expansion drilling, following it up with infill, and really a real systematic, smart approach to the exploration. What is important is you have those discoveries. Now we're proving up that this is a district, and quite a significant district.
By the end of the presentation, I hope you understand that when we look at these systems, this is a gold system that sits above a copper porphyry. Copper porphyries by nature are large, hence the gold systems that sit above them are large. What we're looking at here is a mineral system that has a vertical extent of well over a kilometer, and it stretches for about 6 kilometers now. It's a drilling game. We can't get enough meters in the ground, and that's what it's all about. As a company, pretty tight register, supportive shareholders, 388 million shares on issue. Share price at AUD 0.45. We've got a market capitalization of under AUD 200 million, and we're quite well-funded with AUD 57 million in cash. We've been very conscious of maintaining that register. We like the strong register.
We first raised money in the single digits, raised money again at AUD 0.27, AUD 0.57 and AUD 0.62. There's been a constant elevator of pricing here with our capital placements and very good coverage from Bell Potter and also Blue Ocean. The team, I won't go into people individually, but it's a very strong discovery team. As I said, not just here in Australia, but globally. There's a lot of groups that have been serially successful, like Ivanhoe Mines, BHP, Anglo American. A lot of the team comes from those sorts of areas. It's about value creation, resource development, and also the ability to commercialize these assets. We're looking for real economics projects that matter, and that's really much about the Waratah. History of discoveries, strong expertise in the Macquarie Arc, and we're experienced in these types of systems.
We have the board and the fortitude to drill. We're drilling deep and we're drilling a lot, and it's a very significant step for this project at this stage. I love this picture. This is sitting on our Consols project prospect. All the rigs lined up at the moment. At the moment, we've got about eight drill rigs on this zone. It's pretty impressive. We haven't hit the edges of it, and we're continuing to expand it. A little bit about where we are. The Lachlan Fold Belt's amazing gold-producing area. It's an area that over 80 million ounces of gold have been discovered over an area about 300 sq km. It's a pretty tight area. These rocks host some large copper projects. They also host large gold projects like Lake Cowal. The discovery potential continues to grow here.
Not too long ago, we saw the discovery of Boda in the north by Alkane. We're seeing lots of activity going into this area. It's a pretty friendly mining jurisdiction. People understand mining. They see it and they see the value that it returns to the communities we're in. A little bit of a zoom in. Our Spur project is located about 20 km to the west of Orange. The centerpiece there is obviously the large Cadia Valley project. That's a mine that'll go back to 500,000 ounces of gold per annum, owned by Newmont. We're just to the west of that, completely surrounded with a joint venture there with Gold Fields. The area's held quite tight. There's a lot of activity going on here. There's amazing untested potential.
I think for us, one of the things I pinch myself with is the discovery we're having here at Spur. It shows you the opportunities that are here only three hours from Sydney. It's an amazing area. I think it's about understanding these systems, and drilling them aggressively. A little bit our license, we have a main mining license, which covers 100 sq km. We own that 100%. We have two free mining licenses now that we've acquired there in Ironclad and Golden Clad. The main prospect in the center there, which is our Spur, sits on a mining common. It's a bit of a unique tenure for New South Wales, but it's a very good one, and we believe the conversion to a mining development will be faster than any other tenure in New South Wales.
That comes about that this area was a focus of alluvial gold mining pre-war. This area had about 30,000 people working on it. The war happened, everyone went, and it kind of got forgotten about for a little bit. In the 1970s and 1980s, your larger American companies came out. They recognized the copper porphyry potential of the district. Your Anacondas, your Billitons drilled some deep holes, proved that the center of this is a big porphyry system, big low-grade system, walked away. Golden Cross Resources picked up the asset in the 1990s, but sort of focused on a few other projects. The drilling didn't get drilled. Newcrest came across on the back of the Ridgeway discovery in 1996, drilled a couple of deep holes into geophysical anomalies, proved what we see today, very broad intervals of low-grade copper.
The license got held by an individual for many years. 2024, Waratah was able to pick up the project and go to work. Our strategy was quite simple. It was go to where the old workings were, step off the edge of the porphyry system and test the gold. One of those first discovery holes, 11 meters at 10 grams, proved that the system had grade. That was really important. Then we were able to step back, and we were looking for scale. It's really important, these systems, that you can grow them. We're not talking about narrow vein gold here. We're talking about a gold system that sits above a copper porphyry. In last year, we announced drill hole 62, 208 meters at over a gram.
It was a real step change for us, that had high-grade paths to it at 89 meters at close to two. We ticked the grade, we ticked the scale, and now we're all about showing that this is a genuine district that has a million-ounce potential. A little bit about where we are. Spur in the south, that's really been the focus of our drilling up in the resource. Consols is where we have six drill rigs at the moment. That's the engine room of our growth. We move up to Ironclad, Golden Clad. They're mining licenses we recently acquired. We have drill rigs set on those. Then another further several kilometers to the north, we have Gazzards and Homewood. Really, that's been the focus of this week of some of the RC drilling.
It's proving that the system stretches up. We're continuing to expand and grow this system. When I look at gold projects globally, it's about the fertility of them. A gold project that's able to generate 100-gram meter intervals is really, really important. The science behind it is a bit unexact, but when you look at these big projects, they continue to produce them. 25 intercepts now exceeding over 100 grams a meter. We've got 80 km of drilling program underway at the moment. It says 10 rigs. We've actually moved to 12. I think if you look at the splattering, I won't go through them individually, but you'll see some of the tenure of some of the drill holes there. This is what you get with these types of systems.
They're broad intervals of gold, interrupted by discrete zones of 10 meters at 10 grams type thing. Very high-grade parts to them. A snapshot of our growth. This shows July 2024. You just keep your eye on how this system's growing and how we're continuing to expand it out. July 2025, the discovery of Consols last year. That's where we are today. It's truly a district-scale system. You see there that that cargo intrusive complex is really the engine room of the gold. The gold sits outbound from it and just continues to drop out as we drill around the whole system. Zoom in onto Spur. This is our first discovery. We have two free rigs working here at the moment, very much infill, very much expansion drilling. The zone now covers 1 km by 250 meters.
What we are is we're growing that. We're stepping out towards the Essex fault there in the top end of the corner there. That's important because if we jump over that fault, we get into our Consols discovery. The diamond drilling showing that this is a large system, as again, broad zones of good-grade copper interrupted by very high-grade intervals of copper. We see great continuity in those high grades. We can trace some of those high-grade zones over 350 meters now. Very consistent grade, a very coarse gold, but not spiking. We're very quite consistent in terms of grade and the continuity of the system. It remains open in most directions. We particularly like that area getting up in the northeast corner there as we kept Consols. We see the alteration, the grades kicking in. It's getting hotter and getting better.
If we look at the architecture of this gold system, this is a cross-section through it. At the moment, it's still constrained by some of the drilling. It's open in most directions. You'll see how some of these high-grade zones, you can walk on them. You can stand on them at surface. We've drilled them now down to 400 meters, great continuity, a long section. We're continuing to get surprises. It's one of these systems you come along and when your infill gets better. That comes from understanding the system, targeting the high-grade zones. Some of the rocks there, very coarse gold. You see the gold sitting in these quartz-carbonate veins and very simple geology. At Consols, 62 was the discovery hole here. As I said, this hole was drilled three times. It finished in gold.
We re-entered it, went back down again, finished in gold, went in again, we ran out of rods and finished in gold. A lot of work going in here. We've got six drill rigs working at the moment. This continues to produce very good results, very strong. At the moment, it's about 300 meters east-west, 400 north-south, and 600 in vertical, and we haven't hit the edges of it yet. This is really a drilling game. We can't get enough holes in the ground here at the moment, and it's really the engine room of resource growth at the Spur project. If we look at it in cross-section, some of the drill holes there, 62 comes through. That zone or that load in the middle there is now traced over 300 meters. We're doing 80-meter step outs on these sections. We are lifting at the surface.
You'll notice there that sits about 300 to 400 meters, as we move out and move up and move to the north, that system will come to surface. When you walk out along the surface there, you can see the old workings. You can crack rocks that have got gold in them. We know that will daylight and will continue to grow. Again, very similar geology to Spur. We see gold sitting in quartz-carbonate veins. There's probably a background of porphyry alteration there, mineralization. As we drill deeper, we get hotter, and the gold increases. At Consols, we are lifting at the surface. Better grades are getting better at depth. These systems are great because they're great for bulk mining. They give you optionality of high-grade zones, too.
As I said to you, these systems, these intermediate sulfidation systems, they share the similarities of epithermal deposits, grade, and they share the similarities of porphyry. That's tons and scale. What we know from around the world and look at these systems and what we see in the alteration, the mineralization, the geology here, that we believe this system will have a vertical extent of over a kilometer. We're only a small fraction of the exploration into this. As we see it surface, we see those green rocks transitioning into red rocks. Very coarse gold coming through. It's a very simple system, it's one of the easiest gold systems I've certainly worked in. It's about stepping out and drilling it. There isn't a lot of science going into this now. We're learning things. It's dynamic, it's changing, and it's a very exciting discovery.
A little bit about the preliminary geomet work we've done. This is for our Consols. Results simple, very simple, conventional process for Spur. Very high gold recoveries, up to 90% by gravity and conventional leaching. That's not a surprise. You look at the gold, it's very coarse. Sits in the quartz carbonate. There is a little bit of copper there, but mostly sitting in these quartz-carbonate veins and very coarse gold. We see everything we see in the other systems we're drilling now, very similar geology. That work is going on at the moment with the network more advanced. We can see there from the XRF scanning, which is a great technique. You see that gold sitting there free and very coarse. This year, as I said, the discovery's been made here. This is about how big it can be. Aggressive drill program.
At one, we have Spur. There's several rigs working on that at the moment, trying to understand the scale of system infill, look at the continuity, and really bringing that through into resources. Two is a bridging zone between Spur and Consols. We really like that zone. We're seeing a lot of similarities of Consols as we move up. Consols is, jeez, it's a great discovery. We just can't, as I said, long drill holes going into that at the moment. It's continuing to expand. It's really exciting. It was important for us, we have two mining licenses in there where we sit at Ironclad. We were able to secure those mining licenses earlier this year. I'm happy to say that we're drilling at Ironclad now, and we have permits in place for Golden Clad.
That was really the link that we need to then step out and do the RC drilling in the north, which delivered some amazing results this year. A lot going on here. We are growing this as a district-scale system, but also backfilling and bringing the resources through, too. Just in summary, we believe this is really serious multimillion-ounce discovery potential here. We've only explored a very small fraction of it to date. About 10%-11% of this system is there. It is a district. We've proven now it stretches for over 6 km . It's open at depth and at many angles. We sit in a very rare tenure. This Cargo Mining Common is an amazing tenure to have. It's a good engagement with the township of Cargo there. We believe we've got the right investor appeal. Certainly a tight structure. A lot of catalysts to come.
With that many drill rigs, you have a constant drumbeat of news flow coming, but we'll also have the definition drilling, the work of the geomet studies. It's an exciting program for Waratah. Thank you