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 Please remember to mute the audio on your computer to reduce background noise. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Rylin Bailey, Vice President, Investor Relations for Equinox Gold. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Anna Seiza, and thank you everybody for joining us today for our 4th Metform 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 21 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 Beattie for opening remarks.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Berlin, and good morning, everybody. I first of all want to apologize for this Full facial fuzz I have on, it's my 2nd wave COVID beard and it's coming off the second I get the jab. So I 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.
And 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. And I didn't want to stay beyond my best beyond date and or 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 founded over the years. My very first company was Equinox Resources, which went from 1985 to 1994.
And This will be my last company. I said that when we started Equinox Gold and I remain feeling that today. I certainly don't want to be working on this company for the next 27 years. So 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 3rd anniversary or 4th anniversary, I should say, of our A founding at the end of 2017. And 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. So every year we do this report card. We Provide a guidance of Coric, we'll do that again today. We did this a year ago.
And it's almost for me, it's almost I almost Lose breath talking about what we did this year because we did so much. It was just simply a spectacular year. Christian is going to discuss the 2021 targets in a short while, but I wanted to go over what we said we wanted to do a year ago And what we actually did 1 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 $9.75 to $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 4 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 23.
And 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 On the development front, again, we had a number of very ambitious Targets for development, we wanted to advance our Castle Mountain Phase 2 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 5th 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.
While we did update the mine time 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 Carrizio community blockaded the mine for several months and that certainly slowed us down at Los Filos. But on the whole, the Expansion projects are being well engineered and well underway, and we're going to be able to tell the market what's going on there very shortly. And of course, we have very exciting potential at Aurizona, the Aurizona mine in Brazil, underground underneath the open pit. And we expect to have a very long life underground mine there someday to confirm the economics.
We did a lot more drilling. We completed Positive preliminary feasibility preliminary economic assessment there showing good numbers, good rate of return, good NPV. So that's going to continue along the development line. And 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 resources, I said. So 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 sort of corporate and market front. As everybody will know, the reason we acquired Leagold was to bulk up, build And 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 When we started the Leagold deal, we were trading at around $6 or $7 or $7 or $8 a share. We We had $18 during the course of the year as the market really embraced that transaction. We strengthened our balance We refinanced our debt with about $500,000,000 corporate credit facility at lower interest rates. We focused on, of course, on keeping our employees and our staff 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, and we should be having updates on this all through 2021 as well.
And of course, we've maintained a healthy treasury. We have a very low general and administrative costs relative to other peers in the industry. We're trying to be a frugal company and a lean company, and we have total liquidity today of more than US600 million dollars Of course, the market increased as we got bigger, and we increased our trading liquidity dramatically from an average trading liquidity of about $3,000,000 in 2019 to more than $40,000,000 and 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 and PTSX Index and the FTSE Small Gap Index. And we've significantly increased our institutional ownership from 29% to 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 1 year after we announced the Leagold deal. We announced the acquisition of Premier Gold Mines is a great asset, a great bolt on company for us in another country, a solid, Ready to build asset in Canada, good management team, some tremendous upside at multiple assets, including the new company that The Premier is going to start the Premier Management is going to start, which is called I-eighty. So all sorts of opportunities there. And we strengthened our leadership team, bringing in new people, some new diversity on our Board, 2 female pointees on the Board.
And we're again trying to have Not only the E and the S, but also the G in ESG mandate, which is so critical today. So 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 sort of a 5 or 6 year growth record of Equinox Gold. It includes Current production you saw in 20 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 legal transaction and we completed construction at Castle Mountain. So we ended the year We just announced today sorry, we announced earlier in January, 477,000 ounces of gold production. Next year pardon me, this year, we're on track for between 600,650,000 ounces as we guided today and Krishnan will talk more about that.
But then you can see those next couple of years, the spectacular growth that we have in front of us, getting us to more than 1,000,000 ounces of gold production a year And north of that and upward from that. So 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, impressive growth, and 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 in my 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. So 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 It 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 and 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. So Typically, these larger companies trade for higher multiples.
And so, the very act of getting bigger creates wealth by itself. So we had a very ambitious goal when we started Equinox Gold to go big fast. And I have to say, I think we're hitting it extremely well. And 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 Q1 of 2016 and it's very much intact today. I wouldn't be surprised to see gold blow through It's previous high of over $2,000 an ounce later this year or sometime this year and go to new highs. Of course, not all markets go straight up.
There will be corrections and we're having we've had a correction for the last few months. But 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. But 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 5000 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. So 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 It's going to continue to be a big beneficiary of that this year. You have negative interest rates, negative real rates in most for most bonds are negative now, And particularly if inflation picks up. I mean, why anybody would hold bonds today is beyond my can.
It's 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 have 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 is more expensive. I'm going to start buying things and buying more and more and 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. And 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. And the reverse is true too. And I think we're 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. And in all of that macro reality, the other reality is that very few investment funds actually hold gold. So to the extent that the gold case can be made for General Motors 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. So that's the demand side. But 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 2,009. 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 2020 was actually down from previous years. Why is that? It's because exploration funding has been constrained over the last 4 or 5 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. Things that would have taken mines that would have taken sort of 5 years to build from exploration through to development 10 or 20 years ago, today they take 20 years.
So it's a very different world, supply is constrained, demand is growing, So 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. And 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 25,000,000 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. So I just see us being able to hit all of these targets we set ourselves out and increase our multiples as we get bigger.
So today, we're trading for around 0.55 times net asset value will be going up to 0.8 over 1, 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 is going to talk a little bit more about this, But I just have to say it's just I mean, we believe in it. It's a profoundly important thing that number 1, we have employees that Go home safely every single day that we look after. We have communities that will 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 is inevitable, just the subdivisions, roads, always every other part of human existence damages the environment somehow. But 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. It was quite frankly, I'm very puzzled this happened. I can't 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.
But 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 still we're working very hard with the community on this and it should be signed. The mine is back in operation. But 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. So it's very disappointing we had this problem at the Los Filos mine. It's really set us back some months. But 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. So Christian is going to report more on this in his section shortly.
So this title is kind of a silly title, but really Equinox, I think, is the growingest gold company in the world. I mean, 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 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. But 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, it shows those sort of gold dots, which are Equinox Gold's production estimates.
So in 2020, we produced about 470,000 ounces, as I said. So 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 $600,000,000 in that range as we've guided today And then 2022 around 900,000, 2023, 2024, closer to over 1,000,000 ounces. As we go to the right on that side, we also expect to go higher on that side. We have a higher price to net asset value ratio.
And so We'll see how this plays out, but I'm very convinced that the Equinox Gold is trading at the low end right now and it's going to end 2021 trading much higher Both on a relative basis and an absolute basis. And so 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. But none of this stuff we've done, building a major company out of nothing in 3 short years, Can be done without people. People are the number 1, number 2 and number 3 part of the success of a company.
And 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 Krishamalow 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. And then Doug Reddy on the operating side. Doug joined us from Leagold mid year last year. I'm very, 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 And then we have Peter Hardy, who again is sort of an unsung hero.
He sits in the back and he just makes sure that our money It sounds that our operations are well managed financially, that we have enough capital to do what we're doing. Again, a tremendous asset to the whole team. Another person who is very much part of the senior team, but is in the background more is Susan Tose, who is our General Counsel. And 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 Susan in the as General Counsel handling all the deals. And then of course, you know, Reuben Bailey, I'm sure, who does all of our IR and Congratulations.
She's a superstar on the IR front and she's doing a wonderful job too. And of course, these people simply just They're just the tip of the iceberg. There's 6,000 people in Equinox that work in our whole team and each and every one of them is working to build value for our business and for our stockholders. So 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 and then we'll come back for questions and I can carry on a little bit more. So over to you, Christian.
Great. Thanks, Ross. I have to reiterate, yes, it really is a team effort and that's what makes it a lot of fun here too. It's a great group of people and Really dedicated as owners of this business as well. And 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.
And here on Slide 12, I think this is a really good indicator of Now where we stand. This is a diversified platform. The 4 countries are well represented. And we're really focused on expanding these assets. So 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. So 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 1,000,000 and beyond That period of time and really that point at the end of 2021 as we move into 2022 is a really exciting point We're getting very close to that 1,000,000 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 $400,000,000 of capital into our assets. So We really expect to start to reap the rewards from that later this year. We don't even need to wait till 2022. And our balance sheet is 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. And Dividends are just going to have to wait a little bit longer here. We'll certainly have them on the horizon, but the immediate term we can get some very good returns From the reinvesting. And when you look at the overall production guidance, 600,000 to 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 $9.40 to $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 minds To really set the platform for 2022 and onwards. And what you'll see on the all in sustaining cost is a lot of that investment goes in, in quarter 12 and a little bit into Q3.
So that As we move 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 9 months of 2020. We had a quarter where the COVID suspension by the Mexican government had us down and not operating. And then we also had about 3.5 months, maybe 4 months of that Community blockade, which was resolved there in the end of December.
So we lost a period of stripping underground development for access higher grades in both Guadalupe open pit and the Verma Underground. So we're having to do that this year. So we've had to defer and push on that cost. So We're operating at a more elevated cost and slightly lower production profile than we want to get to. And so the longer term goal here is 300000 to 400000 ounces a year At $1,000 an ounce or below.
So we're going to put the investment in this year and then we'll be moving towards that kind of 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 agree 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 2 communities that are in the region, make sure everything is fair and everything is buttoned down Before we start investing in Bermejal Underground and the CIL plant. So basically 2021 is a transitional year, Slightly lower grades. The grade for the open pit is about 0.75. It's not 1 and above, which it will be once We get into Guadalupe as our main source of ore. So 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 Girmala Underground once we get started there. So late in the year, we'll be getting higher grades from that. So 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. But it sets us up for a strong 2022 of 300,000 to 400,000 ounces and around $1,000 all in.
So 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. And as you look at the production of 170,000 to 90,000 ounces this year, Again, it's back end weighted as we open up those higher grade sources. So about a third of the ounces come out in Q4 and about 60% in the second half of the year. I'm on a little bit of exploration here about $5,000,000 So 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, great performance. Scott and the team has done a great job of extending the mine life there. Tom has done a great job of Turning the asset around and it will have a similar year to 2020 about 130,000 to 40,000 ounces. Again similar To Los Filos, it will be back end weighted. We'll have about 40% of the ounces coming out in Q4, so very heavily weighted to Q4.
And the big activities this year will be stripping Brownie, which is the open pit, it will be $30,000,000 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. And basically, there'll be about a $200 per ounce impact from those 2 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 to 40,000 ounces, so it's a smaller first phase.
All in stay costs a little bit elevated this year because we're going to do all of the leach pad Expansion basically for Phase 1. So basically go in one big shot, cover it off, it will have about $2.50 an ounce impact For the year and then going forward from 2022 onwards, we'll see the all in sustaining costs revert more to the normal expectations there. Small exploration about $1,000,000 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, 120,000 to 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 8,000,000 tonnes of stripping. So our Stripping campaign is fairly large this year at $27,000,000 due to that deferral from 2020. We think we're much better positioned during the rains. And Actually, so far this year, I think we're 30% or so ahead in terms of stripping in January.
So a really good start to the year on that front. That stripping campaign is about $2.15 an ounce. So again, a sort of temporary elevated cost related to that specific item. And we'll spend about $15,000,000 on a TSF raise. Aurizona will continue to get exploration dollars, about $7,000,000 in exploration, land acquisition and study.
The underground 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 You know the 25 kilometer mark from the current mine, so it 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 Licensed 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 tonnes this year.
There's $35,000,000 going to be hit In terms of the waste stripping, so that will have the impact of opening up new ore sources and getting into some better grades for future years. There will be about $10,000,000 of exploration between Pzena and Santa Luz and that's a 70 kilometer 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. So we're going to put some money towards it really make A big effort to extend those mine lives.
RDM will get about $2,000,000 of exploration. And then Pilar, sort of more of a steady as she goes, similar to last year. So the elevated cost, it's a smaller mine. We'll put about $2,000,000 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 tonne per day CIL plant. That should be done around the end of quarter 1. So I'm going to say that will be released in the first half of this 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, maybe 1,000,000 ounces plus could be added. So we'll be excited to get that out and share that with you in probably the early part of the quarter or 2.
And then later in this year, based on the back of that study and getting the agreement signed, etcetera, we will be able to start CIL plant construction, which will get us up to that full scale Expanded mine. And then, 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 quarter 1 here and we'll get a good update out with some photos.
Remember, it's just a low CapEx $100,000,000 build that will be done by the end of this year. So it's Pretty quick process. A lot of the infrastructure is 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 quarter 1.
We'll get that out to you in the Public markets and again we've got 3,600,000 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. Then we'll be starting the permitting around mid year. We're assuming it's about a 3 year permit process To amend that permit and then we can construct and get that line up and running at about 200,000 ounces per year. Looking a little more deeply into the capital here, I do want to highlight Key items, it's a big expenditure year at about $400,000,000 The key items have jumped out obviously in the sustaining capital front doing the open pit waste stripping and the underground development, which will be about $22,000,000 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 $30,000,000 in the leach pad expansion of $10,000,000 We're also leasing a new truck fleet. It would have cost us $40,000,000 of capital, but we're leasing it. We've extended that mine life and originally had a 2.5 year mine life. It still has about a 2.5 to 3 year mine life after having mined out 2.5 years.
And Scott's goal, I know at the end of this year is to still have a 3 to maybe even up to 5 year mine life as we go into 2022. So we still see that We made a 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 $9,000,000 that's for all of Phase 1. So that's the big push this year and then 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.
And 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 $48,000,000 Guadalupe open pit for $10,000,000 and some of those Fleet rebuilds and new equipment for another $25,000,000 Mesquite, it will all be about exploration on the non sustaining front, That'll be about $9,000,000 Castle Mountain, that'll be about feasibility study and the permitting for about $7,000,000 and Aurizona really small, but mostly related to And then the big pay expansion RDM for about $35,000,000 So that sets us up really for a platform of 900,000 ounces in 2022 1,000,000 ounces beyond 2022. So really a key investment year for us. Looking at the actual more near term topical events here, The Premier Gold acquisition was announced in December. Just to refresh, we'll be acquiring Premier's interest in the Hard Rock asset or project, which is a 50% Steak Orion will be our partner there. We'll have the Mercedes mine coming in Mexico.
It's about 50,000 ounces a year with expansion potential. The Red Lake assets being Asaga and Ray Hill Bonanza and also we'll be completing a $75,000,000 financing on the back of that underwritten by Ross. And 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 $50,000,000 market cap up to about 600 Ewan will be taking the Nevada based assets of Premier, spitting them out, hopefully listed right around the time of closing And currently implied in the premier share price is a value of almost US250 $1,000,000 So they're getting real buy into that story already even before the completion of this merger.
And the premier vote will be on February 23. The antitrust in Mexico, COFICI, 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-eighty Gold. Quickly flipping through the premier assets a little more closely. Remember Hard Rock's Ontario, Great infrastructure right along the TransCanada Highway.
It's almost a 5,500,000 ounce deposit. We'll have about 50% of that. Orion will have the other 50%. In the long They're a financial partner, so our goal would be to own a bit more than 50% eventually. And while our attributable production will be over 200,000 ounces, we'll have half of that 14,000 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.
And we're really, really pleased to have the project team, Eric and his team there in Ontario, I've 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 Hard Rock versus other open pit deposits, one of the highest grade deposits in Canada, 400,000 ounces a year, so a good chunky production base. It's fully financed and it's ready to go. Looking on Page 21 here, the other 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 tonnes per day. So 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.
And then the Ray Hill Bonanza is also in But it's a JV with Evolution, so it's sandwiched there between Evolution's ground. So obviously, a very prospective piece of property. And I've already talked about the I-eighty gold assets being spun out. We'll own 30% of that. We'll support them on their initial financing.
And we really think Ewing could create some real value with focus on Basically Nevada based properties, there's 3 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. And if you look at the right three hand graphs, we're moving towards 1,000,000 ounces Plus of the year of production, 15,000,000 ounces of reserves, 28,000,000 ounces of resource and those are going to grow this year. Castle Mountain, Filos, Aurizona all have great potential to grow this year in terms of resources and reserves.
And then you look at our growth, top of the peer chart, As Ross said, we're the growingest company here at 70% plus. And then you look at our multiple on the far left and our job really here as a management team is This year and over the next 12 to 18 months show that we can execute on these growth projects and deliver that value in that rerating. We really believe we should Get that rerating towards that one times multiple, which is a big move in the share price. And we're really excited about this year and moving towards that Looking at the balance sheet, Ross alluded to it. We have $600,000,000 of liquidity, that's about $400,000,000 of cash, $200,000,000 available on a revolver, very low leverage ratio on a basic 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. And we also have about $250,000,000 in our investments in Solaris So 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. And then looking at 2021 objectives and turning to the future here.
As Ross said, HS and E, health and safety, ESG are really important. I'm going 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 sort of Challenging markets where we've had this 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, Hard Rock construction may be commencing at the end of basically the Santa Luz construction period, so there's not much of an overlap there. And then getting the pre feasibility study out in Aurizona Underground. So we've got good Three teams there with some good oversight from corporate.
We believe that each of those is almost a standalone team, so we can manage those multiple projects as we go. Exploration, Scott, has a $36,000,000 $37,000,000 program this year. It will be multi year focused mostly on assets that have shorter mine lives. But 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.
And then corporately, we're closing the Premier Gold transaction. We're going to look to integrate The team there will also be in supporting our investment companies in Solaris and Aitie. 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 sort of growth and development, but we're certainly not going to turn a blind eye to the market as well.
So an ambitious year and a busy year going forward. And as Ross said, ESG is really a critical component here on the next slide. And we've Taking stock of where we're at as a combined company since the Liavold 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. We haven't set baselines yet.
We 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. And also we've got our initial ESG ratings.
Our goal is really to improve those this year. 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 1st annual report as well this year.
So, really a step change in terms of disclosure coming. And a couple of the key focus areas, which really tie into a lot of our projects and that we're excited about, 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 is a great example. Our emissions will reduce, our costs will reduce, the efficiency, the repairs and maintenance will reduce. So all those actually are good smart business Activities, but they're also great for hopefully our ESG platform and our long term sustainability. And 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. And with Ross' ownership on our own, we have about 8.5 So all the decisions really impact us personally. So we have a long term view here. We do have to manage 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 Delivery numbers on a quarter by quarter basis is about actually putting together a business that will see us through the ups and downs over the cycle. So What we've seen this year and you can see in the donut charts there is a real evolution as Ross mentioned in our liquidity. It's up significantly to sort of that $50,000,000,000 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, places we had not been to before and we think we've gained some traction and gained some new shareholders in those places as well.
So We're pretty excited about what we've been able to do. I am looking forward to shaking hands and hopefully one day again with people in Europe and the Americas and in Australasia as well. And then really the last concluding slide in summary, I just want to say thanks to the team for a great year in 2020 and support of the Board and And for you as shareholders, and really 2021, the focus will be on execution. There's big investments. We plan to deliver on all those targets again.
And 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 8 mines and 4 projects in place and 1,000,000 ounces of production with a strong balance sheet In a gold environment, it seems to be extremely supportive here. So I might just turn it back to Ross before we go to questions.
Thank you, Kristen. I don't have any further comments at all. I think you did a great job running through things. We had We're going a little bit longer this year than we did last year because we have a lot more to talk about. So 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 1 to join the question queue. Please remember to mute the audio on your computer to reduce
Background
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 is 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?
Yes. I mean, 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 quarter 1 and 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. And And then we indicate what the capital spend would be for this year, but it will only be for a partial year if we get going later in this year.
Thank you. Another question for Ryan. Does the company expect to spend significant CapEx in 2021 at Hard Rock or will construction kick off in 2022?
Yes. It's another good question. Let's get the acquisition complete. The guys there have a good budget and Basically, we've been setting up the project to go and do some early works. So I think you'll see certainly some modest spend over the next 3 to 6 months as they get the project ready for that kind of Official construction starts and I think you could call official construction sort of in the second half of this year as we also get Santa Luz complete.
So The idea would be Santa Luz is basically done physically later this year. You're kind of launching into the spend of Hard Rock later this year. And once that's done, you have Castle Mountain. So there's a nice sequencing of our projects. I don't really want to speculate too much in the exact spend for this year, but could easily be The $50,000,000 to $75,000,000 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 Cebos negotiations, Christian. So it sounds like the issues that you had around contracting out and employment, you've Settle verbally, it sounds like. And is it that won't get actually formalized into a document until you agree Dispute resolution, so the dispute resolution is kind of the last step here then?
Yes. I mean, it's probably actually a little further along than that. We do everything was they get sort of So they do end up in a written agreement here, but until you have the final signature, I'd say it's not absolutely final. And really the key last outstanding item at the moment is Dispute resolution mechanism and it's an important item. So we're sort of saying it's not completely done until it's done.
But I am very pleased to see the employment and the contracts have been, I think, recently negotiated where it leaves some fair distribution amongst the various communities as well.
And 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? Or are they looking at completely revamping The dispute resolution mechanism and it's a completely new negotiation. I'm just wondering if it's kind of an amendment to what you had or if it's something much more detailed than that.
I think the whole thing is kind of an amendment to a social collaboration agreement we still have in place and exists. I'd say the whole thing is kind of an amendment. It isn't A complete revamp of everything. Obviously, we're trying to have it as workable as possible with as much sort of mediation third party involvement to allow dispute mechanism to happen in a very sort of transparent way. Obviously, the communities would prefer, the leaders would prefer to have as much control over that Decision making is possible and we'd probably prefer the same on our side, but something that's fair that allows sort of 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 block in the future. There's you can never say never, but 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. And again, we're not agreeing to things that in principle or ethics we can't agree to here. And we're not just sort of Increasing benefits so that we sort of pay them to get back to work here. We want a resolution that works for us over the longer term.
Okay. And then obviously that same agreement would flow through to the other 2 communities, I presume. Is that how you're planning?
Yes. They're not exactly the same, but it will be similar, yes.
Great. Okay. Okay, great. I appreciate it. Thank you.
We've got lots of questions on the webcast. So one coming from an investor in Austria. Can you please talk about Solaris? And then 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?
Yes, sure, Christian. I mean, If you go back through some of the news releases, which you can get at solaresresources.com, you'll see that the company raised a fairly significant amount of money late last early this year and are now embarking on an ambitious, I would say, drill program. This is in process now and will continue through the summer. I think That there will be substantial amount of drilling results coming out over the next 12 months. And I mean Internally here at Equinox, really excited about Solaris.
They've had some fantastic results that were in the project to date And that's being reflected in the recent raise and the increase in activity. So I mean from an Equinox perspective, very happy With the performance of Soliris, very happy with what they've accomplished and what their plans are and certainly remain supportive. I mean 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?
No, that's good. Good answer.
Okay. And another question was, what do we plan to do with our I-eighty 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. And we think that You're supporting them and helping finance that initial financing and really getting them off the ground. And we have some good U. S.
Experience too. We think Ewan and his team, he's been placed, I think, Top notch Board and team there that has just announced recently. We can support them over the next few years as well, create some value. And I think you've seen that just from the date of announcement of Premier transaction with us to now you've seen sort of an implied value start to accrete to that investment. And we think it's still got further to go.
So we'd like it to sort of spread its wings, be free to kind of do its own thing and become a standalone company. And I think the focus on those assets and the attention they'll get through Ewan's team will create that value where if they were in our portfolio, there'd be 3 call it individually of the smaller assets Just like Solaris was, we think once this is free and run by a focused team, it will create some value and We see a sort of similar trajectory as we're seeing with Solaris right now.
We've got a few questions about sort of analyst consensus Pricing, which is around CAD22 right now. They're wondering if that's based on sort of our corporate targets or more based on a gold price valuation. And why is there such a disconnect in the valuation and how we're going to get that gap to close?
Well, I can I mean, 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 in some of their targets. And because we're such a growing 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. And a 900,000,000,000 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 Four countries and these are good mining friendly jurisdictions.
So there's no sure thing in life, but Certainly, higher valuation more in line with our peers is going to be our objective. And 12 to 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 one times multiple instead of 0.55. And so it does take a little bit of patience and this is where I would say we're here So
the longer
term, we're taking sort of the investment commitment this year to get that mid term growth, and We think it will pay off and 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.
I'm going to give two questions to Ross. The first one is kind of fun and the second So the first one is, Ross, what inning of the gold cycle are we in? And the second one is, what's your plan for dividends? Should we hold off on dividends So we finished all this growth.
Yes, okay. So I can tell you this for a fact. We are in the 5th inning. We're in the bottom of the I don't know how many and I don't know how long until the night it's going to go, but we are a long way from the end of this full cycle. And I'm very optimistic that It's going to be a party time for many, many years to come.
And 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.
And that means you have when you have that free cash flow, there's 2 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. So, right now, clearly, we're in this incredible growth phase. We have to put it back on 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.
So that's the focus of the company right now For all the reasons we've mentioned. But 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. So 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, developing our assets or back into the hands of our owners. And I know when we come to it, it's going to be a relatively easy decision, I think. But we're not there yet. I just hope we get there soon and we get there successfully.
Okay. Thank you. We had a question about a couple I'm combining these, of course. Do we have any intention of increasing our exposure to silver? And what is our thinking with M and A?
Are we going to focus Canada and the Americas? 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. But on the whole, the mines in Brazil have very, very little silver.
That's just mother nature. It's not because we 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, but 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?
Yes. So, we're very full right now. I mean, we're very, 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, but we're just as you, I'm sure, have all seen, we have a lot of stuff to do. And as Christian Property 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. So Beyond here, really, we as Christian said, if an M and 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. But quite frankly, it's low down in the totem pole. We've got a lot more Important things to do and then go and chase other deals in other countries right now. So, most definitely, it's a very minor focus for us this year. We're full up in 4 great countries and we certainly don't plan to expand beyond those for the time being.
Thank you. Operator, can we please take a question from the phone line?
Certainly. The next question comes from Lawrence Denny, a Private Investor. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Ross actually just answered it in respect to the dividends. It was about Dividends in a rough time frame and he answered it. So I'm going to let somebody else help us more.
Thank you.
Thank you, Laurence. I actually have a follow-up question about dividends from Cary Smith, our analyst at Haywood Security. He's wondering if the dividend policy would be a percent of free cash
We'll tell you when we define it, Kerry. It's not set yet. And I think it's premature to even talk about it quite I think I've been very explicit on the dividend subject.
Okay. A question about Castle Mountain. So is Castle Mountain situated in the Monument Land? How is the permitting process for that going to work? And do you expect any changes now that we've got a new President in the U.
S. Of
I'll take that one, I guess. And 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 patent land 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 the I guess it's early 90s at least. Mike Soray operated there in the '90s and then it was on hiatus there for about 10 or 15 years and we got it up and running about 6 months ago. And Effectively, we're going to stay within that sort of envelope and try to obviously keep our footprint as tight as possible and manage within that Environmental impact statement boundary.
So we're not going to be going into the monument or the preserve. So that will cause a lot less of the Controversy when it comes to amending the permits and slightly enlarging operation, just keeping that footprint tight. We do think it's a good 3 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, but it's Brownfield site and an operating mine has been very interesting.
And 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 in that throughout. So we see it as kind of like business as usual As an operating mine, much better than obviously being a greenfield site, a new version sort of area. And we continue just to amend what we're doing at both 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 are sort of 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?
Yes. I mean, it's sort of an evolving thing. I think every 6 to 12 months, we keep sort of moving the bar out a little bit. Just to recap, we bought it with a 2 point So maybe 3 year mine life in 2018. We basically mined all that out.
We still have a 2.5 to 3 year mine life. So we've seen that extension From the resources and reserves already through drilling and basically a little bit higher gold prices. And there's $9,000,000 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 Continue, we'll call it, incremental expansion. Again, this is pretty forward looking. But I think I said earlier that Scott would love to see A 3 to 5 year mine life at the end of 2021. So that would have meant we've been mining for 3, 3.5 years and we still got a 3 to 5 year mine life With a mine that only had a 2.5 year mine length to start, it's a pretty forgiving site.
When you look at the grades there and the cutoff grades, they're very low. So If there's a sniff of gold in the actual ground around these deposits, it tends to turn into ore pretty quickly right now. And We just see us see it incrementally moving 6 or 12 months in terms of mine life extension periodically here. And it gave us the confidence to buy the fleet to invest in this new leach pad expansion.
It is very synergistic, of course, of Castle Mountain, which is the same exact kind of mine just up the road. So really great having one manager for both mines and a lot of Welcome to people and assets and the ability to purchase together, it's just a good place to be.
Perfect. Thank you. Turning back to ESG. So how does Equinox Gold plan to work collaboratively with the First Nations groups near the Hard Rock project? And do you have any innovative ESG objectives of that project?
I think it's a little bit early to give detailed comment on that. We need to get out and visit Guys there, we introduce ourselves more formally. I mean, obviously, we've done due diligence in that. The one great thing there is that Eric and his team have experienced doing this Historically, at other sites and they've also been based at this project with you and his team there in Thunder Bay and Geraldton over the last number of years. So Those basic structures and relationships are in place and we hope that we can just build upon them and give more confidence.
And 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 Promises made with the First Nations and the communities there. And I think it's a little early to give you too much comment detail on that because we need to go put our feet on the ground and spend a bit more I'm there with the team.
I think it's also fair to say that one of the things that we liked about the Hard Rock site is that it's a kind of a brownfield It is an old producing mine. There's a lot of infrastructure and impact that's already happened there. It's not like we're going into a brand new area that's remote that's Or even close to First Nations location. So it's close to a community. I mean, it's got a lot of structure, 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, 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. And 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 0 total debt in the future?
Yes. I mean, I think
I mean, Peter, we don't have the call, but we think I think Christian has a better answer better question for you to answer.
I mean, our goal over time is to continue to have a more conservative balance sheet. I think there We're comfortable with a low level of leverage that gives us flexibility and sometimes it's more optimal to have a little bit of flexibility with the revolving credit facility there Or bonds, but at the moment in terms of bank debt and cash, we're basically at pretty much nil leverage. The convertible notes that we do All of Novato are well in the money and we do view them basically as equity and them as an equity like partner. So pretty close to that nil leverage kind of mark now and We have drawn some of that cash off the revolver and sit on the cash and part of that has to do with being conservative in the COVID year we just experienced and having excess liquidity available. And 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. So are we considering extending the expiry of the warrants, which is a CAD1.15 dollars effectively CAD1.15 dollars that expire in October 2021? No.
Just to highlight those warrants, I think, just one second there, It's a CAD15 strike price and something to remember is a portion of Solara 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 the Solaris share. So I think at the moment at Solaris' share price and the current warrants indicate that there's about $1.50 of value from those So, and since the strike price is somewhat reduced by the value you get from getting a little extra Solaris.
So just for the sake of our listeners, I will clarify. So each warrant actually has a Canadian $3 exercise price. They expire October 6, 2021. Each warrant exercises into 0.2 shares of Equinox Gold and 0.05 shares of Solaris. So to get a full share of Equinox Gold And 0.25 shares of Solaris, you need to exercise 5 warrants and pay CAD 0.15 dollars A question from So 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?
Yes. 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 So longer life lower cost assets is as they expand and grow you get that scalability. And certainly we expect To be getting sort of $1,000 and below all in sustaining costs, Mark. And you look at the Castle long term profile, On Mesquite, sorry, Los Filos, you look at Hard Rock, you look at Santa Luz, they're all sort of in that below $1,000 mark.
And those are the assets We're investing in terms of projects right now. So we do see that coming down significantly.
Thank you. This is a perfect way to round out the presentation since Ross started talking about his bookend in Equinox Gold. So Ross, now that you're no longer Chair of Pan American, are you going to be spending more time on Equinox Gold and forgive me this question is a little bit personal, but what does Ross plan to do in his retirement?
Well, that's That's a very sweet question. Thank you for that whoever asked it. Yes, I mean, 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, deep team at Pan American Silver, deep on the Board, deep on the in the management side, added all operations. It's a big company now. And it's just time to turn it over. So it's with a sense of, as you can imagine, it's very pointed for me to be Even thinking about doing that, it was such a big part of my life for so many years.
But the company is strong. 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. And really my goal for Equinox is exactly the same thing. I want to build a company that lives 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 reality. And I'm not going to be doing this with Equinox forever, but for now, for sure, the story is not yet complete. And we're not quite there.
We have had a wonderful 3 years. We've grown very quickly. We've grown exactly as we set out to grow. And we've built a real company with tremendous assets, tremendous management, long life and solidity, but we're not 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 At some point, I will be stepping down, but we're not there yet.
So 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. And when I step down, I quite frankly, I want Jay had into nature more. I absolutely love camping, hiking, skiing, kayaking and just being outside. And I just want to do that more while I saw good health and with my family and friends and try to maybe leave my cell phone 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 Really check out and that's definitely in my future, but it's we're not there yet. So, that's I think a full answer to your question.
Thank you very much. There's no further questions on the phone and I think we'll wrap it up because we're at an hour and 15 minutes. So 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 e mail 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 Questions on 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.