Today, I want to talk about Endeavour Mining. I'm sure that you're all familiar with this disclaimer, so I won't bother reading it, but there will be a test at the end of the presentation. Let's look at the overview about Endeavour. What is Endeavour? Endeavour is strategically positioned in West Africa. We've been there since our inception. We are in the world's top 10 of producers. We have five currently operating mines. This year, we'll be doing about 1.1 million ounces of gold. We've been in this area a long time. Why? It's highly prospective. It's been very good to us. We've built mines there over the years. We've got short lead times to construction. It has a lot of favorable factors in terms of quickly turning an asset into a cash-producing entity. It's also been the opportunity for us to do quite a lot of things.
We have sharpened our skills in terms of exploration. I said earlier that this is a place where you get permitting done very quickly. Our Tououga mine, for instance, was from discovery to actually bringing it online into production, eight years. That's a key advantage of operating in this part of the world. It's also a place that has produced a lot of gold over the last 15-odd years, well over 70 million ounces. So it's highly prospective, and today is arguably one of the most prospective. Sorry. It is one of the largest producers of gold in the world. Sorry, what happened there? Yeah. Beg your pardon. Let's talk a little bit about our value creation model. Our value creation model, which has helped us hone our strengths. The first one, exploration, discovery.
We found over 22 million ounces of gold over the last 10 years at $25 an ounce. Let's say, if you think about what you can sell that ounce for today, massive upside opportunity in terms of value creation. Not only do we discover it, we're also developing. We're able to build mines quickly. We've developed five mines on time, on budget over the last decade. Those mines, because of the high-grade nature, are strongly cash generative. The cash that we produce in terms of what we do with the capital allocation goes into the virtuous circle of being able to reinvest in our business, but most importantly, creating shareholder returns. I believe for a long time, the gold industry has only focused on so-called growth, but not given investors something today. Investors deserve something today as well as something into the future.
This model is certainly a model that we're going to be using to make sure that by the end of this decade, we're going to be at 1.5 million ounces of production. The strong cash generation has put us into a position where over the last five years, where we've had a shareholder return program, we've returned just under $2 billion to shareholders. From the time that we actually started that program, that $1.9 billion represents almost about 60% of the market cap of the business at the time that we started with that program. That cash flow there, I think you can see how strong it has been. The red line is not our unit cost. That is the free cash margin per ounce that we have actually produced.
Certainly over the last 12 months, we've seen our free cash flow grow by over 60%. H1 of this year, we delivered $761 million, or about $13.50 for each ounce that we produced. It's put us in a very healthy financial position with regard to our balance sheet. You can see H1 2024, when we're virtually at the point of the big build in our capital program for Tououga, as well as for the Sabodala BIOX plant. That was our peak leverage. Over the time, we've brought that back down to today, we're in a net modest cash position. It's our objective that through the cycle, we want to be at a leverage of around about 0.5, peaking perhaps at about just under one. That we think is ideal. That's the way we try and manage our business.
We have the underlying quality in our asset base that allows us to be able to do that. This year, 2026, we're on track to produce at our guidance. We're certainly slightly ahead at the moment. On the assumption that we conclude the year and there's no banana skins in front of us, certainly it'll be the 12th year out of 13 that we have delivered or beaten our guidance. I think a great tribute to the people who work in the business. I mentioned before about shareholder returns. This program started in 2021, and we take a slightly different view to shareholder returns. We talk a forward outlook about what we're going to pay. So we provide a minimum, and that's the dark blue line, a minimum shareholder return at a given gold price.
Subject to performance, gold price, whatever, we then start looking at supplemental increases over the minimum, which includes both cash dividends as well as buybacks. As I said, $1.9 billion has been returned to shareholders to date. For 2006, we're going to the next three-year program, which sees us through the Assafou build, and we've guaranteed a billion-dollar return to shareholders. This year was $300 million. In H1, based on our performance and the good cash that we generated, we actually paid out $301 million for H1. So we've actually given already back that which we said we were going to give back. You can see over the track record of this program, we've given back over 85% more than the guaranteed minimum. That flows through into these numbers here, as you can see, some very, very strong returns.
A cumulative yield of 37% and a total shareholder return since 2021, as you can see there, 263%. Very much class-leading, indicative of the intrinsic quality that exists in our asset base. Let's looking at growth. Clearly, growth is important. Historically, Endeavour Mining has developed its current portfolio from a series of M&A activities and also getting rid of the poorer quality, short life, higher cost assets. You can see in this little magic box thing, the pink circles are those mines that we have sold off. As you move to the right, longer life, and down to the bottom, lower cost. You can see now the vast majority of our operations are either in that box or actually are going to move even more. Assafou, clearly a very strong performer of being in the right place in that portfolio.
Over the 5 years, see how we've improved the geographic diversification of this business here in West Africa. Looking forward to the growth that we're talking about, you can see here, starting at this year's production estimate. How do we get to the 1.5? You can see Assafou is a major contributor to that, but it's not the only contributor. You've also got the Sabodala-Massawa Underground. This is now beginning a phase for Endeavour where we're not just going to have one underground mine, but we'll probably have a series of projects across the group that we can get in underground, higher grade opportunities, much deeper extraction, far less earth moving. Even beyond those two, there's even more organic growth in the pipeline. Vindaloo Deeps, I'll talk a little bit about later on. Importantly, at our Sabodala-Massawa complex, the Kawsara deposit.
As part of our initiative of looking broader than West Africa, our new ventures looking further afield into places like Kazakhstan as well as Guyana. So a very, very strong organic growth pipeline. Whilst we're certainly not averse to inorganic growth or M&A, we are not under perhaps the same level of pressure that other people are, simply because we've got so much that we can do on our own site. Let's talk first of all about Assafou, our flagship project. It's the largest project that we will be producing. 5 million ton a year. It's about a USD 1 billion project. At least a 16-year life. A 5 million ounce resource of which 4.3 million of that reports to. Sorry, 4.4 million of it reports to reserve. Low cash cost.
It's the biggest project that we've built, but it's very much based upon what we've learnt, and the experience that we've gained from our other 5 projects. So the same project team that we have in-house. We're also going to use the same EPCM, Lycopodium to get us there. This mine is being built specifically with a view that it's not going to stick at 5 million tons a year. It will grow. The prospectivity in this area is great, and we believe that very shortly, once we're up and running, this will quickly grow. The mine is being specifically designed to very easily accommodate growth.
I will be very disappointed if in very short term, we're not back up to somewhere, say like 7.5 million tons a year coming through, which will be dependent upon the asset base that we will be exploiting. The prospectivity around this mine is extremely good. Extremely good. The second project, the Sabodala-Massawa Underground a key component in helping us get up towards our aspirational 350,000 ounces. I'm pleased to say that we have already taken our first blast in this project. We're going to be looking at exploiting a half a million-ounce deposit here. Very importantly, we'll be providing high-grade, fresh material for our CIL plant, which, in fairness, for the last few years, has been fairly starved of feed. So these 2 projects are key to our future, getting up to the 1.5.
As far as getting back to Assafou is concerned, we spent about $13 million exploring it. Take $1 billion for the capital cost. Let's be generous, $1.1 billion. We've created an asset worth well over $5 billion at $4,000 an ounce. It's a five-bagger. It's a great value accretion to shareholders. We're still on track to declare FID for this project by the end of the year. It doesn't stop just at the brownfields, and the brownfields is very important to us. I mentioned that over the last decade, we've done 22.4 million ounces for $25 an ounce, very consistently. What is also important, just hidden away at the bottom a little bit in the smaller script, you can see the quality of those ounces. Decent grade material.
I think we're only really focused on that high quality, because it's that high quality that we exploit that actually helps us generate the cash flows that keeps the whole thing going. Again, rather like our shareholder returns, we're very keen on giving outlook on what we're going to discover, not just what we have discovered. We have a five-year program, and our five-year program says that we are going to discover between 12 and 15 million ounces of gold in and around our operations. That's made up partly from brownfields, between 6 and 9 million ounces. Effectively, what we're saying here is it's our objective to make sure that over this period, we will replace those ounces that we have depleted to keep ourselves in a steady state.
The cream on the cappuccino comes out of our greenfields, wider afield, away from our mine sites and into the new venture territories there as well. It's an ambitious target. When my head of exploration came to me and said, "This is what I want to do," I thought it was a bit chunky. I have to say, after a couple of in-depth reviews with her and her team, I feel very, very comfortable that this is going to be achieved and actually surpassed. Of some of these, I mentioned before about some of the other assets we've got, the Vindaloo Deeps. This is based on our Houndé mine. You can see here, Vindaloo Deeps is actually on the main Houndé pit. It's going to come down out from the pit. It's an underground operation. This will be over 1 million ounces.
We'll be announcing the maiden reserve by the end of the year. It goes even a little bit further and deeper to the Vindaloo Deeps southeast, as well as the southeast extension as well. That's outside of the current mining permit. It will be subject to a new permit that we're busy negotiating with government at the moment. High grade, wide ore bodies, very amenable to underground, good quality, highly productive, minimal dilution operation. A very exciting prospect for the future of Houndé. Here, one of the most exciting developments, I think, in the last year that we've had. We've got a fresh set of eyes on Sabodala mine. The new team came on board. They've looked at this from a very fundamental mineral systems approach. From that, they said, "Well, we've got all these existing pits. How do they all join up?
Why are they there? What is in between? On the basis of that and running these systems through some of our magic software, we have identified an additional 22 targets in this area. This is an 1,100 square kilometer permit, but underexplored. I am very, very excited. Kawsara is going to be a multimillion-ounce deposit. It is on a 10-kilometer strike. It is within 30 kilometers of the mill. It is a decent grade. Again, by the end of this year, we will be talking about a maiden resource coming out from there. The new ventures, you know that our aspiration to grow off our base in West Africa. Why? We have shown that we can explore, discover, exploit, and develop mines. It is time for us to continue doing that in West Africa, but to do it, to play away from home as well and be successful.
We are looking at the three key particular areas where we believe we can be successful for an immature exploration area, underexplored, but with a high potential for proper tier 1 assets in Kazakhstan, in South America, and in the Western Tethyan Belt in Eastern Europe. We have already got three joint ventures, and I am very comfortable and very hopeful that over the next three to five years, we are going to get some very exciting discoveries coming out from these areas. In conclusion, why Endeavour? I always say Endeavour is a business that makes money. We just happen to make money by mining gold. I think you have seen that we have a very simple formula. There is nothing fancy. There is no major financial engineering.
It is just good, solid discovery, execution, and completion, and making sure that we have the right assets that throw the right amount of cash off that we can return to our shareholders and make sure that we are class-leading in terms of yields. Also, despite all the work that we have done, as you can see on these slides, we are still very much undervalued. I think that is it. Thank you very much.