Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Equinox Gold Virtual Investor Reception. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If you are participating through the webcast, you can submit a question in writing by using the text box in the lower left corner of the webcast frame. If you prefer to ask your question verbally by joining the conference call, use the Call Me link to enter your phone number, and the conference bridge will call your phone and join you to the conference call. Once you have been joined to the call, please press star one to join the question queue. Please remember to mute the audio on your computer to reduce background noise.
If you are listening by phone and would like to join the question queue, please press star then one on your telephone keypad at any time throughout the call. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Rhylin Bailie, Vice President, Investor Relations for Equinox Gold. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Anastasia, and thank you, everybody, for joining us today for our fourth annual investor reception. Normally, Ross would hold this reception in Toronto, but of course, because of COVID, everything has gone virtual this year. Today's reception corresponds to the release of our 2021 production guidance, which we put out this morning. We will, of course, be making a number of forward-looking statements today, so please take the time to visit our website and our continuous disclosure documents on SEDAR and on EDGAR. I will now turn the reception over to Ross Beaty for opening remarks.
Thank you very much, Rhylin, good morning, everybody. I first of all want to apologize for this dreadful facial fuzz I have on. It's my second wave COVID beard, it's coming off the second I get the jab. Don't expect you'll be seeing this hopefully too much longer. You'll also, I think, have noticed this week that I announced my retirement from Pan American Silver after 27 years since I founded it in 1994. The time was right, Pan American is now a major global mining company with great management and outstanding mining and growth assets. It's just good governance, I think, to have managed succession, I didn't want to stay beyond my best beyond date. Best before date, I should say.
When we started Equinox Gold at the end of 2017, though, I was very public in saying this was going to be my last company out of the 15 or so that I've founded over the years. My very first company was Equinox Resources, which went from 1985 to 1994. This will be my last company. I said that when we started Equinox Gold, I remain feeling that today. I certainly don't want to be working on this company for the next 27 years. This time I'm going very quick and very hard to build a major global gold company. My message today is so far, so good. This is our third anniversary or fourth anniversary, I should say, of our founding at the end of 2017.
I think you'll agree with me when we go through today's guidance and today's discussion that we've done a pretty good job of hitting our milestones that we set out at the very start. Every year we do this report card. We provide a guidance, of course. We'll do that again today. We did this a year ago, and for me, I almost lose breath talking about what we did this year because we did so much. It was just simply a spectacular year. Christian's going to discuss the 2021 targets in a short while. I wanted to go over what we said we wanted to do a year ago and what we actually did one year hence. Let's start with operations.
We said we were going to produce 425,000 to 465,000 ounces of gold, and we actually hit about 477,000 ounces by the end of 2020. Our aim for cost was in the $975 - $1,000 per ounce range, and we expect to hit that guidance very resoundingly. We had acquired Leagold at the end of 2019, or we had announced the deal. We actually wrapped that deal up in about March of 2020, and that added four producing mines and a big development stage project, the Santa Luz project in Brazil. We said we wanted to build Castle Mountain and start production by the end of 2020, and we hit commercial production on November 23rd.
Of course, it was a very, very difficult year across the operational base because of COVID, but we managed to run all of our operations without impairing the health and economic well-being of our employees. On the development front, again, we had a number of very ambitious targets for development. We wanted to advance our Castle Mountain phase II expansion. We're very much on track for that, and that should be announced very shortly in 2021. We said we wanted to commence construction of the fifth mine of ours in Brazil, the Santa Luz mine, and we did announce that on November 9th, and full construction is currently underway. We wanted to advance the Los Filos expansion projects, where we have many, many opportunities for growth. Well, we did update the mine plan reserves and the CIL design. We're going to be targeting announcing those results in Q1.
We did have a hiccup mid-year when the community at the Carrizalillo community blockaded the mine for several months. That certainly slowed us down at Los Filos. On the whole, the expansion projects are being well-engineered and well underway. We're going to be able to tell the market what's going on there very shortly. Of course, we have very exciting potential at Aurizona, the Aurizona mine in Brazil, underground, underneath the open pit. We expect to have a very long life underground mine there someday to confirm the economics. We did a lot more drilling. We completed a positive preliminary economic assessment there showing good numbers, good rate of return, good NPV. That's going to continue along the development line. On the exploration front, we explored everywhere we had opportunity to. We expanded the Mesquite mine.
We doubled the mine life, extended the Aurizona mine life. We upgraded the underground Aurizona resource, as I said. We had all of these operational development and exploration milestones, pretty much hitting every single one. We also made a lot of progress on the corporate and market front. As everybody will know, the reason we acquired Leagold was to bulk up, build scale. We did that for all sorts of reasons, having to do with better multiples, better liquidity, and we absolutely hit those targets. You will have seen when we started the Leagold deal, we were trading at around six or $7 or seven or $8 a share. We hit $18 during the course of the year as the market really embraced that transaction. We strengthened our balance sheet, refinanced our debt with about $500 million of corporate credit facility at lower interest rates.
We focused on, of course, on keeping our employees and our staff healthy. We had a good year on the environmental incident side, on the health and safety side. We commenced something that's very, very important for all companies today, which is ESG reporting. We should be having updates on this all through 2021 as well. Of course, we've maintained a healthy treasury. We have a very low general and administrative cost relative to other peers in the industry. We're trying to be a frugal company and a lean company, and we have a total liquidity today of more than $600 million U.S. Of course, the market increased as we got bigger, and we increased our trading liquidity dramatically from an average trading liquidity of about $3 million in 2019 to more than $40 million.
In fact, it's quite a bit higher coming out of 2020 into 2021. We have been added to the GDX, the GDXJ, the S&P TSX Index, and the FTSE SmallCap Index. We've significantly increased our institutional ownership from 29% - 55% of our common shares. In terms of growth, of course, we had a massive year of growth, but it's also positioning us for even more massive growth coming ahead. We had completed the Leagold deal late in the year. Exactly one year after we announced the Leagold deal, we announced the acquisition of Premier Gold Mines. It's a great asset, a great bolt-on company for us, adding another country, a solid, ready-to-build asset in Canada, good management team, some tremendous upside at multiple assets, including the new company that Premier management's going to start, which is called i-80. All sorts of opportunities there.
We strengthened our leadership team, bringing in new people, some new diversity on our board, two female appointees on the board, and we're again trying to have not only the E and the S, but also the G in the ESG mandate, which is so critical today. It was just a fabulous year, and I look forward to another incredible year this year. If you look at this slide, it really says it all. This is a five or six-year growth record of Equinox Gold. It includes current production. You see there in 2018, we produced about 25,000 ounces in that year. In 2019, we produced about 175,000, 180,000 ounces. We added the Aurizona mine that we built. In 2020, we added the Leagold transaction, and we completed construction at Castle Mountain.
We ended the year, we just announced today, or sorry, we announced earlier in January, 477,000 ounces of gold production. This year, we're on track for between 600,000 and 650,000 ounces as we guided today, and Christian Milau will talk more about that. You can see those next couple of years, the spectacular growth that we have in front of us getting us to more than 1 million ounces of gold production a year, and north of that and upward from that. This is a, I think it's a growth profile that's really unparalleled in the gold industry, a company coming out of nowhere, starting at the beginning of 2018, and massive growth. I'll explain why we're doing this in a few minutes.
Let's really talk about gold, because if there's any reason that we're going big quickly, it's because I'm extremely bullish on the macro outlook for gold. I think we are living in a time right now where I've been running public companies now since the mid-80s, for 35 years. I can't think of a time when we had a more bullish macro outlook for higher gold prices. In that market, you just can't be big enough when you're trying to build a gold company. Every single dollar the gold price goes up magnifies your value gain if you're a bigger company. If you produce more gold, if you have more gold reserves and resources in your capital assets, you're just worth more. I think the market today rewards that. It also rewards scale like it's never done before.
There is so much more trading liquidity and value recognition as a company gets bigger, as it becomes lower risk, as it develops a better balance sheet, as it can withstand turmoil in markets. Typically, these larger companies trade for higher multiples, and so the very act of getting bigger creates wealth by itself. We had a very ambitious goal when we started Equinox Gold to go big fast. I have to say, I think we're hitting it extremely well. We're also getting the gold market right. One of the reasons that I was so keen on building a big new gold company is because I feel we're in really a secular bull market for gold that's got very, very long-lasting fundamentals. Just look at what's happening today. You have this secular uptrend. It began in the first quarter of 2016, and it's very much intact today.
I wouldn't be surprised to see gold blow through its previous high of over $2,000 an ounce later this year or at some time this year and go to new highs. Of course, not all markets go straight up. There will be corrections, and we've had a correction for the last few months. We're back in an uptrend, and I think it's strong and it's going to continue. If anything, it's much stronger than I would have expected a year ago before COVID hit. With all of this incredible stimulus, these expansionary economic plans of governments to try to juice their markets, get things going again, pumping money into the system, devaluing their currencies, that is a perfect scenario for an asset like gold, that for 5,000 years has held its purchasing power against all fiat currencies. This is one of the great strengths of gold.
It maintains its value relative to paper currency, and typically increases its value relative to paper currencies that are being devalued and debased as governments just go bananas borrowing money, inflating their balance sheets themselves. We've seen this just explosion of stimulus, and I think gold was a big beneficiary of that last year, and it's not over, and it's going to continue to be a big beneficiary of that this year. You have negative interest rates, negative real rates for most bonds are negative now, and particularly if inflation picks up. Why anybody would hold bonds today is beyond my ken. Why hold an asset that you have to pay people to borrow from? It's nuts compared to other assets like gold, which I think have this tremendous long-term store of value.
I think we're going to head to higher inflation times at some point in 2021 as well. I just think it's unavoidable as more people have more devalued money and tend to get it into the economy, into the system, all of a sudden, they're going to realize, "Wait a minute, building products are crazy higher. Food is more expensive. Everything's more expensive. I'm going to start buying things and buying more and more." That's what juices inflation, and I think you're going to see some signs of that this year, which will be very, very, very good for gold. Of course, I think all of this is in an environment where gold and the U.S. dollar have typically traded inversely to each other. As the U.S. dollar gets stronger, gold tends to get weaker. That's been a 50 or 60-year trend.
The reverse is true, too, and I think now the U.S. dollar is weakening, and it's going to be weakening against gold. Gold will appreciate against the U.S. dollar. I see that trend continuing for a long time. In all of that macro reality, the other reality is that very few investment funds actually hold gold. To the extent that the gold case can be made for generalist investors as it was Q2 last year when gold sailed through $2,000 an ounce, I think you're going to see another great, glorious run in gold at some point in 2021, 2022. That's the demand side. On the supply side, a lot of people forget about the supply side. Gold supply from mines is actually decreasing, and this comes after you see that gold price chart. Gold has actually done pretty well since 2009.
It's actually done very well. In this environment, you'd expect a lot more gold production. It hasn't happened. Gold production in 2019 and 2020 was actually down from previous years. Why is that? It's because exploration funding has been constrained over the last four or five years. Reserve replacement is slow, but more fundamentally, it's just tough. It's a tough business. It's very tough these days to build new mines. It's tough to get social license. It's tough to get countries to agree on reasonable taxation rates. It's just a tough game. Mines that would have taken sort of five years to build from exploration through to development 10 or 20 years ago, today, they take 20 years. It's a very different world. Supply is constrained, demand is growing. The perfect formula for gold prices to stay higher for longer.
I think it's the right time to build a major gold company, and we're doing that. As I said earlier, the market rewards scale and diversification. When you have an environment like we've created here with Equinox Gold in a very short period, we've come out of nowhere. We've built this great base, this tremendous solid base, financial base, operating base, management base with upside all over the map. We have upside in our tremendous production growth story. We have upside in our huge reserves and resources. We have more than 25 million ounces now in reserves and resources. That's an incredible capital base to build on for future years. It allows us to continue this growth for many, many years. We have all of this exploration upside in all of our assets, and we're going to hit those this year.
We're going to be completing the Premier acquisition in about a month, maybe a month and a half. That's going to build value. We have all the money we need. We don't need to finance anymore. We've got tremendous operating cash flow and a great balance sheet. I just see us being able to hit all of these targets we set ourselves out and increase our multiples as we get bigger. Today we're trading for around 0.55 times net asset value. We'll be going up to 0.8 over one, and I'll explain that in just a second as I show you some other companies to sort of understand where I think we're going to go. Now, just a word about ESG. Christian's going to talk a little bit more about this, but I just have to say, it's just something we believe in.
It's a profoundly important thing that, number one, we have employees that go home safely every single day that we look after. We have communities that support us, that work with us, national governments that we pay fair taxes to, and we work with constructively. We don't damage the environment. We try to minimize our environmental footprint. Of course, no mine is a pristine thing. No mine is free from some environmental damage. It's inevitable. Just as subdivisions, roads, railways, every other part of human existence damages the environment somehow. We can minimize it, and we're working very hard to minimize it with good tailings management, good waste control. Everywhere we operate, this ESG commitment is real. Now, we did have a problem this year. We had a blockade at one of our mines. Quite frankly, I'm very puzzled this happened. I just don't really understand why it happened.
It may have been a legacy thing. It may have been something we did, I don't know. The dispute is almost completely over. We're still fussing a couple of things in the agreement. It's not yet signed, but we're working very hard with the community on this, and it should be signed. The mine's back in operation. We work very hard to avoid these things. It really means a lot to us to have the S in the ESG subject. The S is social, and we really try to focus on minimizing social problems, working with communities. It's very important. It was very disappointing we had this problem at the Los Filos mine. It's really set us back some months. Hopefully we'll go into the future with a much better track record of social relevance at that mine and at all of our other operations.
Christian's going to report more on this in his section shortly. This title is kind of a silly title, but really, Equinox, I think, is the growiest gold company in the world. I don't know of any other gold company anywhere with our growth track record. I keep talking about growth. There's nothing magic about growth particularly, but I do think it adds value per se, and if you can do it successfully, and I have to say, it's one thing to say you want to grow, it's a very different thing to do it. It's a tough game. Acquisitions don't come easily. I think so far we've demonstrated that we look for value and not simply growth. We are actually trying to build value here for shareholders over the long term.
This bubble chart, though, if you look at it shows those sort of gold dots, which are Equinox Gold's production estimates. In 2020, we produced about 470,000 ounces, as I said. That put us in that particular group of companies at that gold production level. As we get bigger, as we produce more, for example, 2021 will be about 600,000 and 650,000, in that range, as we've guided today, and then 2022, around 900,000. 2023, 2024, closer to over 1 million ounces. As we go to the right on that slide, we also expect to go higher on that slide. We have a higher price to net asset value ratio.
We'll see how this plays out, but I am very convinced that Equinox Gold is trading at the low end right now and is going to end 2021 trading much higher, both on a relative basis and an absolute basis. I really look forward to that happening and reporting to you all a year from now on how we've done once again. My last slide is in my section here is going to be really just transferring the call over to Christian. None of this stuff we've done, building a major company out of nothing in three short years, can be done without people. People are the number one, number two, and number three part of the success of a company.
I just want to take my hat off, and I hope every single shareholder and interested party here on this call today appreciates just how smart these guys are, how good they are, and how dedicated they are to building value for our company. We have Christian Milau at the helm, our CEO. Right beside him, almost literally is Greg Smith in the office. Greg Smith, our President. Greg handles all of our strategic development, our business development. They're both super. Doug Reddy on the operating side. Doug joined us from Leagold mid-year last year. I'm very happy to have him, and he's really adding some incredible depth and strengths to the operating team, and he's leading all of the development plans, all of the construction operations, and of course, current operations at all of our mines.
Then we have Peter Hardie, who, again, is sort of an unsung hero. He sits in the back, and he just makes sure that our money is sound, that our operations are well-managed financially, that we have enough capital to do what we're doing. A tremendous asset to the whole team. Another person who's very much part of the senior team, but is in the background more is Susan Toews, who is our general counsel. I can tell you that none of what we have done really across the board, from our applications to the New York Stock Exchange for listing, to all the financings we've done, the reorganization of our debt, all of the transactions, the mergers, the acquisitions we've done, none of them could have happened without the strength of Susan as general counsel handling all the deals.
Then, of course, you know Rhylin Bailie, I'm sure, who does all of our IR and public relations. She's a superstar on the IR front, she's doing a wonderful job, too. Of course, these people, they're just the tip of the iceberg. There's 6,000 people in Equinox Gold that work in our whole team, each and every one of them is working to build value for our business and for our stockholders. With that summary of 2020, and my little discussion about gold there, I'm going to turn the call over to Christian, who's going to get into the weeds a bit and talk about specific operations, the guidance, and some other things. Then we'll come back for questions, I can carry on a little bit more. Over to you, Christian.
Great. Thanks, Ross. I have to reiterate, yeah, it really is a team effort, and that's what makes it a lot of fun here, too. There's a great group of people, and really dedicated as owners of this business as well. As Ross mentioned, we're creating this diversified platform to grow from, and we're on our way to becoming a larger gold mining company. Here on slide 12, I think this is a really good indicator of now where we stand. This is a diversified platform. The four countries are well-represented, and we're really focused on expanding these assets. We've got about a quarter of the value, I'd call it the reserves, resources as well in each of these four countries, even though they're different scale assets. All of them have growth. Not any single region is exclusive of growth here.
Even Mesquite that people doubted we could grow has extended its mine life. We're really excited about the platform, and we can continue to grow it and evolve it. As Ross said, we produced just under 500,000 ounces last year. We'll do 650 or so this year. That's almost a 33% increase. Moving towards 900,000 ounces in 2022 and a million and beyond that period of time. Really that point, the end of 2021 as we move into 2022, is a really exciting point when we're getting very close to that million ounce mark, which was a goal we set a few years ago. Looking at the more specific guidance here on slide number 13. It's a big investment year. We're pretty upfront about that. This year is a year that we're actively and consciously investing in almost all of our assets. We're exploring.
We've got a multi-year exploration platform in place now. We're putting about $400 million of capital into our assets. We really expect to start to reap the rewards from that later this year. We don't even need to wait till 2022, our balance sheet's in a really strong place, as Ross alluded to. We believe that investing this balance sheet and some of our operating cash flow back into the business has really attractive returns. Dividends are just going to have to wait a little bit longer here. We'll certainly have them on the horizon, the immediate term, we can get some very good returns from the reinvesting. When you look at the overall production guidance, 600,000-665,000 ounces, it's more back-end weighted. About 30% of those ounces will come out in Q4, about 55% in H2.
Our cash costs are about $940- $1,000 an ounce. They're slightly elevated this year. There's slightly more conservative assumptions on the FX rates, fuel costs, and consumables. As well, the all-in sustaining cost is a little bit higher. We're really putting some sustaining capital investment into our mines to really set the platform for 2022 and onwards. What you'll see on the all-in sustaining costs is a lot of the investment goes in Q1 and Q2 and a little bit into Q3, so that as we move it throughout the year, you'll see a quarter-on-quarter improvement generally across the mines, as we start to reap the rewards in the later part of this year. The one mine that really sort of sticks out, obviously it was impacted most from previous expectations, was Los Filos, as Ross said. We lost, give or take, nine months of 2020.
We had a quarter where the COVID suspension by the Mexican government had us down and not operating. We also had about three and a half months, maybe four months of that community blockade, which was resolved there in the end of December. We lost a period of stripping underground development for access higher grades in both Guadalupe open pit and the Bermejal Underground. We're having to do that this year, so we've had to defer and push on that cost. We're operating at a more elevated cost and a slightly lower production profile than we want to get to. The longer-term goal here is 300,000-400,000 ounces a year at $1,000 an ounce or below. We're going to put the investment in this year, and then we'll be moving towards that goal starting in 2022.
Looking individually at the assets, I mentioned Los Filos here, and looking at it a little more closely, I'll touch on the actual situation there and the current update. We put it back into operation in late December. As Ross said, we virtually agreed most of the items in the new social collaboration agreement with the community leaders. The two sticking points that I mentioned, I think on the last webcast, were employment and contracts related to the growth in this business and the areas of growth that we'll have, particularly Bermejal Underground. Those areas have been actually resolved verbally, and we're just in the final discussions over dispute resolution mechanisms. Not an easy topic, but that's a key thing for us in the future.
We want to know that we have a long-standing partnership with the community there, as well as the other two communities that are in the region, make sure everything is fair and everything's buttoned down before we start investing in Bermejal Underground and the CIL plant. Basically, 2021 is a transitional year. Slightly lower grades. The grade for the open pit is about 0.75. It's not one and above, which it will be once we get into Guadalupe as our main source of ore. We're still reprocessing some materials, still mining from the Los Filos open pit. We're also going to be moving to open up the Bermejal Underground once we get started there, late in the year, we'll be getting higher grades from that. This year from the Los Filos underground, our grades are more in the 3.6 gram range.
They will go slightly higher as we get into Bermejal late in the year and into 2022. It sets us up for a strong 2022 of 300,000-400,000 ounces and around $1,000 all in. We're going to be excited to get towards the end of this year where this mine hopefully should be in a great place to launch into 2022. As you look at the production of 170,000-190,000 ounces this year, again, it's back-end weighted as we open up those higher grade sources. About a third of the ounces come out in Q4 and about 60% in the second half of the year. We'll have a little bit of exploration here, about $5 million. It's a bit smaller.
We've got a long life of 10 years already. Looking at Mesquite again, I think in last call I mentioned it's just had a great performance. Scott and the team have done a great job of extending the mine life there. Tom's done a great job of turning the asset around, it'll have a similar year to 2020, about 130-40,000 ounces. Again, similar to Los Filos, it'll be back-end weighted. We'll have about 40% of the ounces coming out in Q4, very heavily weighted to Q4. The big activities this year will be stripping Brownie, which is the open pit. It'll be $30 million put into that, as well as expanding the leach pad, and we see that as a really great problem.
We need more leach pad space because we've extended this mine life, basically, there'll be about a $200 per ounce impact from those two individual items. They'll be increasing the cost on a temporary basis. At Castle Mountain, this is the first full year of operations, 30,000-40,000 ounces, it's a smaller first phase. All-in sustaining costs a little bit elevated this year because we're going to do all of the leach pad expansion basically for phase I. Basically go in one big shot, cover it off, it'll have about a $250 per ounce impact for the year, going forward from 2022 onwards, we'll see the all-in sustaining costs revert more to the normal expectations there. Small exploration of about $1 million because we've already got a 16-year mine life here. Turning to the Brazilian assets on the next slide.
Aurizona, similar year to 2020, 120-30,000 ounces. The big change here is a little bit more fresh rock coming in, about 23% of the ore feed will be from fresh rock versus 14% in 2020. We did have to defer about 8 million tons of stripping, our stripping campaign is fairly large this year at $27 million due to that deferral from 2020. We think we're much better positioned during the rains, actually so far this year, I think we're 30% or so ahead in terms of stripping in January. A really good start to the year on that front. That stripping campaign is about $215 an ounce. Again, a sort of temporary elevated cost related to that specific item, we'll spend about $15 million on a TSF raise.
Aurizona will continue to get exploration dollars, about $7 million in exploration, land acquisition and a study. The underground PFS should come out in the second half of this year. We hope to add to the reserve and resource as well with continued drilling, and we'll also be exploring some targets around the 25 km mark from the current mine. Should be an exciting year for Aurizona. Fazenda and RDM, somewhat similar years to this prior year that we just completed in 2020 in terms of production. The big change, I guess, really comes at RDM where we're expanding the pit. We got the pit expansion license late last year, and now we're going to put all the effort into it and our mining contract will be moving a lot of tons this year. There's $35 million going to be hit in terms of the waste stripping.
That'll have the impact of opening up new ore sources and getting into some better grades for future years. There will be about $10 million in exploration between Fazenda and Santa Luz, and that's a 70 km greenstone belt between the two. We're really excited about that district. For us as Equinox, we're fairly new to this. Doug obviously has lots of experience here and we really like what we see there. We're going to put some money towards it, really make a big effort to extend those mine lives. RDM will get about $2 million of exploration, and then Pilar, sort of more of a steady as she goes similar to last year. Slightly elevated cost. It's a smaller mine. We'll put about $2 million into exploration there. Looking at the growth and development projects on the next slide. This is where the real excitement comes.
Los Filos, as we said, this will be a 350,000-ounce producer for at least a decade, probably a few decades to come here as we get it expanded. We're just doing the new updated study for the 8,000 ton per day CIL plant. That should be done around the end of quarter one. I'm going to say that'll be released in the first half of this year. The thing that I'm really excited about there is that the reserves and resources currently see a 10-year mine life, but I really do see an opportunity to add to that mine life in that study and maybe a million ounces plus could be added. We'll be excited to get that out and share that with you in probably the early part of quarter two.
Later this year, based on the back of that study and getting the agreement signed, et cetera, we will be able to start CIL plant construction, which will get us up to that full scale expanded mine. Santa Luz construction, it's ongoing. It's going well. We're probably about a quarter of the way through already. Hopefully start mining around the end of Q1 here, and we'll get a good update out with some photos. Remember, it's just a low CapEx, $100 million build that'll be done by the end of this year, so it's a pretty quick process. A lot of the infrastructure's already there and the team from Aurizona, a lot of the senior members are there rebuilding this mine. Castle Mountain expansion, we're just updating the feasibility study there. That should be done around the end of Q1.
We'll get that out to you in the public markets. Again, we've got 3.6 million ounce deposit, 16-year mine life, and we only see upside in that, and we hope to be adding to the reserves and the mine life in that study. We'll be starting the permitting around mid-year. We're assuming it's about a three-year permit process to amend that permit, and then we can construct and get that mine up and running at about 200,000 ounces per year. Looking a little more deeply into the capital here, I do want to highlight the key items. It's a big expenditure year at about $400 million. The key items that jump out, obviously in the sustaining capital front, we're doing the open pit waste stripping and the underground development, which will be about $22 million in total.
We will be rebuilding the fleet and acquiring a bit of processing equipment. That sets us up for this growth and the ability to mine more and to basically expand this whole region effectively around Los Filos. Mesquite has that big Brownie strip of 30 million and the leach pad expansion of 10. Would've cost us $40 million in capital, but we're leasing it. We've extended that mine life. It originally had a two and a half year mine life. It still has about a two and a half to three-year mine life after having mined out two and a half years. Scott's goal, I know at the end of this year is to still have a three to maybe even up to five-year mine life as we go into 2022. We still see that upside.
We've made the real commitment to invest in it and it's really going to pay off, we think, in the near term here. Castle Mountain, the leach pad expansion is about $9 million. That's for all of phase I, that's the big push this year, you see the real benefits of that in our costs next year. Aurizona, the big waste stripping program I mentioned, and the tailings down lift. When you look at the non-sustaining capital, the big items are really around Los Filos, where we're going to be opening up the Bermejal underground for about $48 million, Guadalupe open pit for $10 million, some of those fleet rebuilds and new equipment for another about $25 million. Mesquite, it'll all be about exploration on the non-sustaining front. That'll be about $9 million.
Castle Mountain, that'll be about the feasibility study and the permitting for about $7 million. Aurizona, really small, but mostly related to exploration, then the big pit expansion RDM for about $35 million. That sets us up really for a platform of 900,000 ounces in 2022 and 1 million ounces beyond 2022. Really a key investment year for us. Looking at the actual more near-term topical events here, obviously, the Premier Gold Mines acquisition was announced in December. Just to refresh, we'll be acquiring Premier Gold Mines' interest in the Hardrock asset or project, which is a 50% stake. Orion Mine Finance will be our partner there. We'll have the Mercedes mine coming in in Mexico. It's about 50,000 ounces a year with expansion potential. The Red Lake assets being Hasaga and Rahill-Bonanza. Also, we'll be completing a $75 million financing on the back of that underwritten by Ross.
We hope to finalize that around the closing of the transaction in March. The exciting other part is obviously we've been quite key in helping support new companies spun out of our platform. Solaris has had a great start. It's moved from about a $50 million market cap up to about $600. i-80 Gold will be taking the Nevada-based assets of Premier, spinning them out, hopefully listed right around the time of closing. Currently implied in the Premier share price is a value of almost $250 million. They're getting real buy-in to that story already, even before the completion of this merger. The Premier vote will be on February 23rd. The antitrust in Mexico, COFECE, we're hoping in March. We don't have an exact date on that, which will drive ultimately the closing in March, and spin-out of i-80 Gold.
Quickly flipping through the Premier assets a little more closely. Remember Hardrock's in Ontario, great infrastructure right along the Trans-Canada Highway. It's almost a 5.5 million ounce deposit. We'll have about 50% of that. Orion will have the other 50%. In the long term, they're our financial partners, so our goal would be to own a bit more than 50% eventually. And our attributable production will be over 200,000 ounces. We'll have half of that 414,000 ounces. Got community agreements in place, it's permitted for construction, feasibility is updated, exploration ground is nearby to extend mine life. So that initial 14-year mine life is just the start.
We're really, really pleased to have the project team, Eric and his team there in Ontario, have built a number of Agnico Eagle mines in more remote locations than this in Northern Canada, and they're ready to go later this year. Looking at Hardrock versus other open pit deposits, one of the highest grade deposits in Canada, 400,000 ounces a year. A good chunky production base. It's fully financed and it's ready to go. Looking on page 21 here, the other assets, Mercedes mine in Mexico, it's 50,000 ounces. Its all-in cost will be around $1,000 an ounce. The expansion potential is there towards 80,000 or 90,000 ounces. That mill is capable of doing about 2,000 tons per day. We'll get a good chance to look at that as the acquisition completes. Hasaga in Red Lake, we really do like it.
I know Scott spent a bit of time looking at it. There's a bit of excitement around that property. The Rahill-Bonanza is also in Red Lake, but it's a JV with Evolution, sort of sandwiched there between Evolution's ground. Obviously, a very prospective piece of property. I've already talked about i-80 Gold assets being spun out. We'll own 30% of that. We'll support them on their initial financing, and we really think you can create some real value with focus on basically Nevada-based properties. There's three of them there. Stepping back now and looking at the larger picture here, and I do like this slide. It really puts us in there amongst our peers.
If you look at the right three hand graphs, we're moving towards a million ounces plus of the year of production, 15 million ounces of reserves, 28 million ounces of resource, and those are going to grow this year. Castle Mountain, Filos, Mesquite, Aurizona all have great potential to grow this year in terms of resources and reserves. You look at our growth. Top of the peer chart, as Ross said, we're the growiest company here at 70% +. You look at our multiple on the far left, and our job really here as a management team is to execute this year and over the next 12-18 months, show that we can execute on these growth projects and deliver that value and that re-rating.
We really believe we should get that re-rating towards that one times multiple, which is a big move in the share price. We're really excited about this year and moving towards that exciting 900,000 ounce year in 2022. Looking at the balance sheet, Ross alluded to it, we have $600 million of liquidity. That's about $400 of cash, $200 million available in a revolver. Very low leverage ratio on a bank debt basis to EBITDA. We're at almost a nil ratio right now. There's lots of potential to finance whatever we're doing. Operating cash flow continues to grow year on year. We also have about $250 million in our investments in Solaris and i-80. Really, really strong balance sheet puts us in a great place to make the decisions that are necessary to grow the business, not to capital constrain our assets.
Looking at 2021 objectives and turning to the future here. As Ross said, HS&E, health and safety, ESG are really important. I'm going to touch on that in the next slide, so I'll just mention that here. We plan to meet our guidance, obviously. That's one of our key objectives here, setting realistic guidance, even in these sort of challenging markets where we've had these COVID environment. Our development is probably one of our key boxes here on this slide. It's all about execution this year. Los Filos feasibility, advancing the expansion, Castle Mountain feasibility, commencing the permitting for the expansion, Santa Luz construction, Hardr ock construction may be commencing at the end of basically the Santa Luz construction period, so there's not much of an overlap there. Getting the pre-feasibility study out in Aurizona underground.
We've got good discrete teams there with some good oversight from corporate. We believe that each of those is almost a standalone team, we can manage those multiple projects as we go. Exploration, Scott, has a $36 million, $37 million program this year. It'll be multi-year focused, mostly on assets that have shorter mine lives. We're really excited about what we see there, and finally now is getting the capital to go and look at those assets more closely. Corporately, we're closing the Premier Gold transaction, and we're going to look to integrate the team there. We'll also be supporting our investment companies in Solaris and i-80, and we'll still keep an eye out on the market, as we've been opportunistic in the past. It's a little bit lower priority.
We're more focused on our inward growth and development, we're certainly not going to turn a blind eye to the market as well. An ambitious year, a busy year going forward. As Ross said, ESG is really a critical component here on the next slide. We've taken stock of where we're at as a combined company since the legal merger. We've been able to hopefully articulate things that we're doing well. There's a few areas we're not doing so well, or we haven't set baselines yet. We've selected standards to report to. We're a Gold Council. We've joined MAC. We're really getting up the curve in terms of our reporting standards that we want to be meeting. Also, we've got our initial ESG ratings. Our goal is really to improve those this year, and a lot of it's about disclosure.
Our website now has quarterly updates on ESG metrics. We're increasing disclosure that we'll be putting out quarterly. We're looking to put out our first annual report as well this year. Really a step change in terms of disclosure coming. A couple of the key focus areas which really tie into a lot of our projects and that we're excited about, and areas around greenhouse gas emissions has become such a critical topic. We're looking at all of our projects, our fleets, ways that we can manage that, setting our baselines and targets, and seeing how we can improve. We're looking at filter and dry stack tails, particularly in our new projects, some of our Brazilian assets where it's very sensitive. We're looking at hydroelectric power, solar power in a couple of our projects. We're also looking at new truck fleets. Mesquite's a great example.
Our emissions will reduce, our costs will reduce, the efficiency, the repairs and maintenance will reduce. All those actually are good, smart business activities, but they're also great for hopefully our ESG platform and our long-term sustainability. Then looking at the governance piece, which Ross mentioned, it's certainly an important piece, and it's really dear to my heart as well. Management think of ourselves as owners of this business. We sit here with you as shareholders, as significant owners in our own right of this business. With Ross's ownership and our own, we have about 8.5% of the shares. All the decisions really impact us personally. We have a long-term view here. We do have to manage quarter to quarter, but a lot of our decisions, and particularly this year with all the capital investments, about setting up a great long-term platform.
It's not just about delivering numbers on a quarter-by-quarter basis. It's about actually putting together a business that'll see us through the ups and downs over the cycle. What we've seen this year, and you can see in the doughnut charts there, is a real evolution, as Ross mentioned, in our liquidity. It's up significantly to sort of that $50 billion mark. We're much more diversified geographically. We found that actually the COVID environment and the electronic Zoom-type meetings and that have allowed us to reach out to Asia, to Australia, to places we had not been to before. We think we've gained some traction and gained some new shareholders in those places as well. We're pretty excited about what we've been able to do.
I am looking forward to shaking hands hopefully one day again with people, in Europe and the Americas and in Australasia as well. Really the last concluding slide. In summary, I just want to say thanks to the team for a great year in 2020 in support of the board and for you as shareholders. Really 2021, the focus will be on execution. There's big investments. We plan to deliver on all those targets again. 2022 will be a really exciting year, and I just don't see how we can't get this rerating if we can just execute this year over the next 12 to 18 months. It's going to be fun when we have the eight mines and four projects in place and a million ounces of production with a strong balance sheet in a gold environment that seems to be extremely supportive here.
I might just turn it back to Ross before we go to questions.
Thank you, Christian. I don't have any further comments at all. I think you did a great job running through things. We're going a little bit longer this year than we did last year because we have a lot more to talk about. I think we've done that, and I think it's time to turn the call over to anybody who's got questions. Thank you all for joining us.
Perfect. Thank you. Operator, can you please remind our listeners how to ask a question?
Certainly. Once again, if you are participating through the webcast, you can submit a question in writing by using the text box in the lower left corner of the webcast frame. Or you can ask your question verbally using the Call Me link and entering your phone number. Once you have been joined to the call, please press star one to join the question queue. Please remember to mute the audio on your computer to reduce background noise. If you are listening by phone and wish to ask a question, please press star, then one. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue.
Thank you very much. I'll take a question from online. The first question comes from Ryan Thompson, who's our analyst at BMO. Please provide an update on the Los Filos CIL plant. Does 2021 capital guidance include that capital, or is it expected in 2022?
I can take that one. No, it does not include the capital for the CIL plant build. We'll get that actual capital number in total out, with the study around the end of Q1, we'd make a construction decision on that at some point, call it maybe early Q3 at earliest, I think, in our board meeting there. We'd indicate what the capital spend would be for this year. It'll only be for a partial year if we get going later in this year.
Thank you. Another question from Ryan. Does the company expect to spend significant CapEx in 2021 at Hardrock, or will construction kick off in 2022?
Yeah, that's another good question. Let's get the acquisition complete. The guys there have a good budget and basically have been setting up the project to go and do some early works. I think you'll see certainly some modest spend over the next three to six months as they get the project ready for that official construction start. I think you could call official construction in the second half of this year as we also get Santa Luz complete. The idea would be Santa Luz is basically done physically later this year. You're launching into the spend of Hardrock later this year, and once that's done, you'd have Castle Mountain. There's a nice sequencing of our projects.
I don't really want to speculate too much on the exact spend for this year, but could easily be in the $50 million-$75 million mark, but that's not official guidance yet.
Thank you. We'll take a question from the phones, please.
Certainly. The next question comes from Kerry Smith with Haywood Securities. Please go ahead.
Thanks, operator. Good morning, everybody, and thanks for hosting the call. I just had a follow-up on the Los Filos negotiations, Christian. It sounds like the issues that you had around contracting out and employment, you've settled verbally, it sounds like. Is it that won't get actually formalized into a document until you agree on a dispute resolution? The dispute resolution is the last step here then?
Yeah. It's probably actually a little further along than that. Everything as they get settled, they do end up in a written agreement here. Until you have the final signature, I'd say it's not absolutely final. Really the key last outstanding item at the moment is dispute resolution mechanism. It's an important item, so we're saying it's not completely done till it's done. I am very pleased to see the employment and the contracts have been, I think, reasonably negotiated, where it leaves some fair distribution amongst the various communities as well.
In the agreement that you had previously with the community, I presume there was a dispute resolution mechanism. Is the likely outcome of this dispute resolution to be fairly close to that? Are they looking at completely revamping the dispute resolution mechanism and it's a completely new negotiation? I'm just wondering if it's an amendment to what you had or if it's something much more detailed than that.
I think the whole thing is an amendment to a social collaboration agreement we still have in place and exists. I'd say the whole thing's an amendment. It isn't a complete revamp of everything. Obviously, we're trying to have it as workable as possible with as much mediation, third-party involvement to allow a dispute mechanism resolution to happen in a very transparent way. Obviously, the communities would prefer, the leaders would prefer to have as much control over that decision-making as possible, and we'd probably prefer the same on our side. Something that's fair, that allows almost a mediation style or at least a grievance process that can be managed is much preferable. People have asked, is there a chance of a blockade in the future?
You can never say never, I think one thing that we've done here is we've taken the long road of actually trying to resolve this so that there's a way forward that's fair to everyone, that it's clear, that it's well understood. Again, we're not agreeing to things that in principle or ethics we can't agree to here, and we're not just increasing benefits so that we pay them to get back to work here. We want a resolution that works for us over the longer term.
Okay. Obviously that same agreement would flow through to the other two communities, I presume. Is that how you're planning?
Yeah, they're not exactly the same, but it'd be similar. Yeah.
Right. Okay. Okay, great. I appreciate it. Thank you.
We got lots of questions on the webcast. One's coming from an investor in Austria. Can you please talk about Solaris? A couple of other questions people have asked are just what are your long-term plans for that Solaris investment?
I don't know if, Greg, do you want to comment on Solaris?
Sure, Christian. If you go back through some of the news releases, which you can get at solarisresources.com, you'll see that the company raised a fairly significant amount of money late last year, early this year, and are now embarking on an ambitious, I would say, drill program. That's been processed now and will continue through the summer. I think that there will be a substantial amount of drilling results coming out over the next 12 months. Internally here at Equinox, we're really excited about Solaris. They've had some fantastic results that there were in the project to date, and that's being reflected in the recent raise and the increase in activity. From an Equinox perspective, very happy with the performance of Solaris, very happy with what they've accomplished and what their plans are, and certainly remain supportive. Longer term, it's hard to say at this stage.
I think at the moment it's fair to say we remain very supportive and we participated in that last financing.
Follow up with that, Christian?
Nope, that's good. Good answer.
Okay. Another question was, what do we plan to do with our i-80 investment?
We don't even own it yet, so once we close and it spins out, I see it as a similar situation with Solaris here. We think that through supporting them and helping finance that initial financing and really getting them off the ground, I know we have some good U.S. experience, too. We think Ewan and his team, he's put in place, I think, a top-notch board and team there that he's just announced recently. We can support them over the next few years as well, create some value. I think you've seen that just from the date of announcement of Premier transaction with us to now, you've seen an implied value start to accrete to that investment, and we think it's still got further to go. We'd like it to spread its wings, be free to do its own thing and become a standalone company.
I think the focus on those assets and the attention they'll get through Ewan and this team will create that value where if they were in our portfolio, they'd be three, call it individually, of the smaller assets in the portfolio and just wouldn't get the attention. Just like Solaris was, we think once this is free and run by a focus team, it will create some value. We see a similar trajectory as we're seeing with Solaris right now.
We've got a few questions about analyst consensus pricing, which is around CAD 22 right now. They're wondering if that's based on our corporate targets or more based on a gold price valuation, and why is there such a disconnect in the valuation, and how are we going to get that gap to close?
Well, I can speculate a little bit on that. I think analysts have been changing their gold price over this past year, and you've seen it going up, although I suspect a couple have come down just recently. There will be a variation in gold prices for sure, and some of their targets. Because we're such a grow-y company, as Ross said, it does take a lot of work to get up to speed with all of our assets and as we bring in the new ones with the Premier acquisition. I think what you'll see is at the moment, it's all about execution, as I said earlier. A 900,000 million ounce plus producer at around $1,000 all-in cost in the long term here or lower really doesn't trade at 0.55 in the multiple when you've got that diversity across the four countries.
These are good mining-friendly jurisdictions. There's no sure thing in life, but certainly, a higher valuation more in line with our peers has got to be our objective. 12-18 months as we get these new mines into production, and we show the growth, and we increase the resource and reserves. Certainly, I put my money behind it. I really believe that we can show that value accretion towards the peer level of that give or take 1x multiple instead of 0.55. It does take a little bit of patience, and this is where I always say we're here for the longer term, and we're taking the investment commitment this year to get that midterm growth, and we think it'll pay off.
It's better to be spending that money currently on reinvesting those assets at higher returns than giving a small yield and dividend this year. In the future, obviously, that may change.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Okay. I'm going to give two questions to Ross. The first one's kind of fun, and the second one's more serious. The first one is, Ross, what inning of the gold cycle are we in? The second one is, what's your plan for dividends? Should we hold off on dividends until we've finished all this growth?
Yeah. Okay. I can tell you this for a fact. We are in the fifth inning. We're in the bottom of the fifth, and the game is going to go for extra innings. I don't know how many, and I don't know how long into the night it's going to go, but we are a long way from the end of this bull cycle, and I'm very optimistic that it's going to be a party time for many, many years to come. Again, the bigger the better in terms of participating in that gold price rise. Now, the thornier question of dividends. Obviously, we want to be a big dividend payer. That is 100% of our long-term mission. You can't pay a dividend until you have a lot of free cash flow. That means when you have that free cash flow, there's two places to put it.
You can give it back to your shareholders through dividends and stock repurchases, or you can invest it in growth and build your capital value. Right now, clearly, we're in this incredible growth phase. We have to put it back in the ground. We got wonderful rates of return on these investments when we build them, and we convert them from gold resources in the ground to producing assets. That's the focus of the company right now for all the reasons we've mentioned. There will be a time, and I hope it's going to be very soon. I don't know if it's going to be next year or the year after or even later this year when we say, "You know what? Maybe the gold price has gone up a little bit more. Maybe we're generating more cash than we thought we were going to.
Maybe we have more than we need for our growth operation, for our budget. Let's give some back to shareholders. We don't know when that's going to happen. From my standpoint, it can't happen too soon, but it's got to be a rational decision based on a better place to put that money into the ground to developing our assets or back into the hands of our owners. I know when we come to it's going to be a relatively easy decision, I think. We're not there yet. I just hope we get there soon, and we get there successfully.
Okay. Thank you. We got a question about a couple I'm combining these, of course. Do we have any intention of increasing our exposure to silver? What is our thinking with M&A? Are we going to stick with Canada and the Americas, or are we thinking of Ecuador? What are our plans from a country perspective?
Well, on the subject of silver, the answer to that is no, we're not focused on silver. We're focused on gold. It so happens that most of our mines are almost pure gold producers. They have very little silver in them. Los Filos has a little bit. On the whole, the mines in Brazil have very, very little silver. That's just mother nature. It's not because we've run away from silver, it's just that we don't have assets that have a lot of silver production inherent to the deposit that they're being produced from. That may change, but most definitely our focus is on gold, first, second, and third. If we get byproducts, be it silver, copper, lead, zinc, or whatever, we'll take those to reduce our overall costs. The focus is on gold to be a very large pure play gold producer. What was the second question?
Whether we're thinking of any other countries like Ecuador or other countries in South America, or if we're going to stick with where we are.
Yeah. We're very full right now. We're very full. We have a huge amount of work. Our heads are down. We've got the money, the people, and the capacity to do what we're doing right now. We're just, as you, I'm sure, have all seen, we have a lot of stuff to do. As Christian properly pointed out, the key to the company right now is execution. We've absolutely got to hit the targets we've set ourselves. That's what defines a great company, when you actually do what you say you're going to do year after year after year, as we've done. Beyond here, really, as Christian said, if an M&A opportunity comes in to go somewhere else, we'll look at it. We're not averse to doing it if there's real value there. Quite frankly, it's low down on the totem pole.
We've got a lot more important things to do than go and chase other deals in other countries right now. Most definitely, it's a very minor focus for us this year. We're full up in four great countries, and we certainly don't plan to expand beyond those for the time being.
Thank you. Operator, can you please take a question from the phone line?
Certainly. The next question comes from Lawrence Denney, a private investor. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Ross actually just answered it with respect to the dividends. It was about dividends and a rough timeframe, and he answered it. I'm going to let somebody else have the floor. Thank you.
Thank you, Lawrence. I actually have a follow-up question about dividends from Kerry Smith, our analyst at Haywood Securities. He's wondering if the dividend policy would be a percentage of free cash flow or some other mechanism.
We'll tell you when we define it, Kerry. It's not set yet. I think it's premature to even talk about it, quite frankly. I think I've been very explicit on the dividend subject.
Okay. A question about Castle Mountain. Is Castle Mountain situated in a monument land? How is the permitting process for that going to work? Do you expect any changes now that we've got a new president in the U.S. of A?
I'll take that one, I guess. Basically, if you look on a map, there's a carve-out in the monuments and preserve area right on the border with Nevada, and basically there's BLM land and some private lands or patented claims there that are basically where the mine sits. There's an environmental impact area and definition there that's permitted, and it's been there since, I guess, the early 1990s at least. Mine Sore operated there in the 1990s, and then it was on hiatus there for about 10 or 15 years, and we got it up and running about six months ago. Effectively, we're going to stay within that envelope and try to obviously keep our footprint as tight as possible and manage within that environmental impact statement boundary. We're not going to be going into the monument or the preserve.
That'll cause a lot less controversy when it comes to amending the permits and slightly enlarging the operation. Just keeping that footprint tight. We do think it's a good three-year program, and if anything, I'd say it's hard to predict what the new regime or Biden's government will do. I think permitting timelines may slip a little bit. It's a brownfield site and an operating mine, and it's been very interesting. When you look at this mine historically or you look at Mesquite, they operated through Republican and Democratic regimes, and they got permit amendments and expanded and changed and that throughout. We see it as business as usual, as an operating mine, much better than obviously being a greenfield site in a new virgin area. We continue just to amend what we're doing at both the mines in California.
We don't see a big change other than maybe a little bit slower.
Okay. Staying in California, just a question about what our overall plans are for mine life extension at Mesquite and what are we hoping to be able to get out of the exploration programs there?
Yeah, it's an evolving thing. I think every six to 12 months, we keep moving the bar out a little bit. Just to recap, we bought it with a two and a half to maybe three-year mine life in 2018. We've basically mined all that out. We still have a two and a half to three-year mine life. We've seen that extension from the resources and reserves already through drilling and basically a little bit higher gold prices. There's $9 million going into capital this year. It's probably our biggest single exploration program. We're drilling old dumps and pads. We're drilling out some of the resource around our current pits, and we just see continual, call it incremental expansion. Again, this is pretty forward-looking, but I think I said earlier that Scott would love to see a three to five-year mine life at the end of 2021.
That would have meant we've been mining for three and a half years, and we still got a three to five-year mine life with a mine that only had a two and a half year mine life to start. It's a pretty forgiving site. When you look at the grades there and the cutoff grades, they're very low. If there's a sniff of gold in the actual ground around these deposits, it tends to turn into ore pretty quickly right now. We just see it incrementally moving six or 12 months in terms of mine life extension periodically here. It gave us the confidence to buy the fleet to invest in this new leach pad expansion.
It is very synergistic, of course, with Castle Mountain, which is the same exact kind of mine, just up the road. Really great having one manager for both mines and a lot of movement of people and assets and ability to purchase together. It's just a good place to be.
Perfect. Thank you. Turning back to ESG. How does Equinox Gold plan to work collaboratively with the First Nations groups near the Hardrock project? Do you have any innovative ESG objectives at that project?
I think it's a little bit early to give detailed comment on that. We need to get out and visit the guys there, introduce ourselves more formally. Obviously, we've done due diligence in that. The one great thing there is that Eric and his team have experience doing this historically at other sites, and they've also been based at this project with Ewan and his team there in Thunder Bay and Geraldton over the last number of years. Those basic structures and relationships are in place, and we hope that we can just build upon them and give more confidence. I know that the local groups were quite excited to see us coming in because it showed that there is now a funded ability to move this project forward and actually deliver on some of the agreements and promises made with the First Nations and the communities there.
I think it's a little early to give you too much comment and detail on that because we need to go put our feet on the ground and spend a bit more time there with the team.
I think it's also fair to say that one of the things that we liked about the Hardrock site is that it's a kind of a brownfield site. It is an old producing mine. There's a lot of infrastructure and impact that has already happened there. It's not like we're going into a brand new area that's remote or even close to a First Nations location. It's close to a community. It's got a lot of infrastructure, a lot of history. We just don't see having issues, and we think that the team that is there already has done a very good job of the social side of the ESG equation, dealing with not just First Nations in the region, but also the local community. We think we'll inherit all of that going forward once we complete the acquisition in March.
Thank you. A question for you, Christian, as the accountant on the team. Do you have a goal of getting to zero total debt in the future?
Yeah.
Peter on the call, but I think, Christian, that's a better question for you to answer.
Our goal over time is to continue to have a more conservative balance sheet. I think we're comfortable with a low level of leverage that gives us flexibility. Sometimes it's more optimal to have a little bit of flexibility with a revolving credit facility there or a bond. At the moment, in terms of bank debt and cash, we're basically at pretty much nil leverage. The convertible notes that we have outstanding, all with Envida, are well in the money. We do view them basically as equity and them as an equity-like partner. We're pretty close to that nil leverage mark now. We have drawn some of that cash off the revolver and sit on the cash. Part of that's to do with being conservative in the COVID year we've just experienced and having excess liquidity available.
As we start to deliver on projects this year, I think you could see us start to pay back some of that revolver and actually sitting on the cash will actually reduce the revolver amount drawn.
Thank you. This is a question I get quite often from retail shareholders around the world. It's about the warrants. Are we considering extending the expiry of the warrants, which are the effectively CAD 15 that expire in October 2021?
No.
There you go.
Just to highlight those warrants, I think because relating to this one second there, it's a CAD$15 strike price, and something to remember is a portion of a Solaris share. I can't remember the exact number off the top of my head. I'm sure Greg has it, but you get a portion of a Solaris share. I think at the moment, at Solaris' share price and the current warrants indicate that there's about a CAD 1.50 of value from those Solaris shares that you get. In a sense, the strike price is somewhat reduced by the value you get from getting a little extra Solaris.
Just for the sake of our listeners, I will clarify. Each warrant actually has a CAD 3 exercise price. They expire October 6th, 2021. Each warrant exercises into 0.2 shares of Equinox Gold and 0.05 shares of Solaris. To get a full share of Equinox Gold and 0.25 shares of Solaris, you need to exercise five warrants and pay CAD 15. A question from Switzerland. You talked a lot about the investment this year and how that's going to increase your production going forward. As you grow your production, will your all-in sustaining costs come down?
Yeah. The simple answer is absolutely yes. All these longer life, sort of large projects and part of the reason why we've always said we want to focus on the sort of longer life, lower cost assets is as they expand and grow, you get that scalability. Certainly, we expect to be getting sort of that $1,000 and below all-in sustaining cost mark and you look at the Castle long-term profile, Los Filos, you look at Hardrock, you look at Santa Luz, they're all sort of in that below $1,000 mark, and those are the assets that we're investing in in terms of projects right now. We do see that coming down significantly.
Thank you. Well, this is the perfect way to round out the presentation since Ross started talking about his bookend in Equinox Gold. Ross, now that you're no longer chair of Pan American, are you going to be spending more time on Equinox Gold? Forgive me, this question is a little bit personal, but what does Ross plan to do in his retirement?
Well, that's a very sweet question. Thank you for that, whoever asked it. Yeah, I'm not out of Pan American yet. I'll be stepping down as chair in the May annual meeting this year. As I said, after 27 years, the time is right. It's time for succession. We have a deep team at Pan American Silver, deep on the board, deep in the management side, and at all operations. It's a big company now. It's just time to turn it over. It's with a sense of, as you can imagine, it's very poignant for me to be even thinking about doing that. It was such a big part of my life for so many years.
The company is strong, and it's going to live well beyond my lifetime, and that was really what I wanted to do when I started it back in 1994. Really my goal for Equinox is exactly the same thing. I want to build a company that has a life beyond my lifetime. I don't know how much longer I'm going to be on Earth. I'm going to turn 70 this year. It's hard for me to accept that, but it's a reality. I'm not going to be doing this with Equinox forever. For now, for sure, the story is not yet complete. We're not quite there. We have had a wonderful three years. We've grown very quickly. We've grown exactly as we set out to grow. We've built a real company with tremendous assets, tremendous management, long life, and solidity.
We're not quite there yet. We've got lots more execution to do, and it's very important for me to focus on that to make it all happen. It's not going to last forever, and at some point, I will be stepping down, but we're not there yet. Yes, I probably will spend a little bit more time on Equinox this year, although I've been spending plenty of time on it the last few years. When I step down, I quite frankly, I want to head into nature more. I absolutely love camping, hiking, skiing, kayaking, and just being outside. I just want to do that more while I still have good health and with my family and friends and try to maybe leave my cellphone behind after so many decades of being in the business world, having a lot of things going on, building companies.
It's going to be time to check out and really check out. That's definitely in my future, but we're not there yet. That's, I think, a full answer to your question.
Thank you very much. There's no further questions on the phone. I think we'll wrap it up because we're at an hour and 15 minutes. If for some reason we weren't able to take your question online, I will get back to you as soon as possible with an email response. Ross and Christian, I'll turn it back to you for closing remarks.
I think we're done. I really appreciate everybody's time today. Thank you all for your questions and your patience as we walk through this very much bigger, better, stronger, more dynamic company than it was just a year ago. Thank you all.
Thanks, everyone.
Thank you very much for joining us today. Operator, you can now conclude the call.
This concludes today's presentation. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.