We joined Montage about 18 months ago. Same as the company before, I've been able to have rapid success in the region. That's why we joined Montage, because we see West Africa as a place where you can quickly go from first drill hole to production. In some situations, you know, between seven and ten years, the same time it takes you to get a permit in North America. The team is largely ex-Endeavour, between Silvia, Peter, Pierre, myself, and Constant that was at Kinross. We've reinforced our board recently with Jeremy Langford, who was also with Endeavour before, did four builds in ten years along with Peter, and most recently with Artemis Gold Inc. Of course, Ron being our chairman. For those of you less familiar with Côte d'Ivoire, it's one of the fastest growing economies in Africa. It's a well-diversified economy. Mining represents about 7% of GDP.
Gold within that is a smaller portion. It's got oil and gas. It's got agriculture such as cashew and cacao, etc. It means that it's got, you know, government, we come under less pressure because of the diversification of its economy. We're in the northern part of Côte d'Ivoire. The south of us is Fortuna with Séguéla, and to the north of us is Tongon with Barrick Gold and Sissingué with Perseus Mining. In our study, there were just two deposits, Koné and Gbongogo. Those are the economics you see on the page there, four million ounces of reserves with an initial resource of five million ounces that was then grown to six million ounces last year. Since then, we've added seven new deposits to resource stage, with many more coming, which I'll talk about in the upcoming pages.
In terms of screening, it screens quite well across assets in West Africa. These are all producing assets in the region. Koné is long mine life, low all-in sustaining cost, and production size already of scale with over 300,000 ounces per year, and capacity to increase that by bringing in higher grade satellites. In terms of builds, we're one of the largest builds worldwide with over 300,000 ounces of production annually. As you'll see in the next pages, we expect to be closer to 350,000 to 400,000 in the first years. Definitely one of the largest builds in a single asset company, which is why we're getting a lot more attention these days. In terms of the production profiles, as I mentioned, there's two deposits in the study. For the first three years, we're blending Gbongogo with Koné, which explains why production is higher.
Koné is being mined over eight years and processed over 16. The back end is all the low-grade stockpiles. At this conference here last year, we had published a target of finding a million ounces at a grade that's 50% higher than the Koné deposit to be found within a two-year timeframe, before we start production. Fast forward one year later, that is now largely in our back pocket with the discoveries that have been done. What that does is provide the potential to bring higher grade deposits in first, which increases production to 350,000, 400,000 the first years, and is able to lock in a profile of at least 300,000 ounces over 10 years. We see other levers as well to improve this production profile. You, of course, have higher grade deposits coming through.
Second, we've been doing over 60,000 meters of infill drilling at Koné and Gbongogo, which is showing higher grades coming through. That should be a second uplift. Third, the plant, we've made a number of changes before launching the construction. We would expect the plant to run 10% to 15% above nameplate as well. Another change being done, we're contemplating doing an oxide startup, which would allow us to be in production about four or five months early, which could see us in production as early as end of next year, rather than the previously stated Q2 2027. That would allow us to process oxides up front, lower working capital. While we're in the operation phase, when we're doing maintenance on the HPGR, we can still be running the oxide circuit in parallel. Looking at the exploration potential, there are over 50 targets that have been identified on the property.
These grounds used to belong to Endeavour Mining and Barrick Gold to the north of us. When the discovery was made at Montage Gold Corp., that JV was injected into Montage Gold Corp. Out of the 50 plus targets, we drilled over 20 of them in the last 18 months or so. All of them came back with high-grade intercepts. We went one step further. In order to prioritize our efforts, we decided to drill them in further indicated status to be able to get an idea of what the grade could be. Seven deposits were published earlier this year. All those grades are between one gram and 1.6 grams. That is 60% to 160% higher grade than the Koné deposit. Last year, we did 83,000 meters. This year, we did more than that in only the first six months of the year.
The budget was supposed to be 90,000 meters. Given the success, we've increased that to 90,000 to 120,000 meters of drilling this year, plus the advanced grade control being done. We would expect new resources to be published in the upcoming months and into early next year. We're fully funded. We secured over $950 million of financing last year. The goal for us was to maximize net present value per share, which takes into account cost of capital and dilution. We did it largely with partners. We got over 90% leverage on the asset, raised about $130 million U.S. out of the $950 million sum that you see here. Zijin Mining Group came in as a 9.9% shareholder, and along with that brought some subordinate debt instruments. With $50 million of debt and $75 million of subordinated fully redeemable stream, which means you can buy back everything.
Wheaton Precious Metals came with $625 million of stream, but we've been able to negotiate some fairly novel features. The stream is only on the two deposits that were in the study, so Koné and Gbongogo. All the new deposits, there's no stream on those. The upside on the exploration front is for Montage Gold Corp. shareholders. In addition, just as if it was debt, we're able to pay it back early. We can accelerate repayments into the stream. The minimum payments for the first 400,000 ounces of production is about 20% of production, which decreases to 10% for the next 130,000 ounces. We can decide to deliver 50%, 60%, or more of our production into the stream. If we had a second mine, we can deliver gold from the second mine into it.
We can arbitrage our cost of capital depending on how the world evolves between signing this and production. In addition, as the gold price goes up, we have some slight benefit that we capture through the transfer pricing. Construction was launched in November of last year. It's been going very well. We're doing self-perform as per what we were doing at Endeavour Mining. We've secured over 40%, 45% of the CapEx has been locked in. No surprises on the cost. That's because we redid the whole tender process before launching construction. You see a few pictures here. The ball mill foundations on the left, the CIL tank installation, the thickeners, and the water storage facility. The water storage facility was one of the critical path items for this year, which was completed before the rainy season. We have now two full rainy seasons to capture.
We have a short video to show the progress being made on site. You see the process plant area with the CIL tanks going up. As I mentioned, the thickeners in the back, ball mill foundations. We have the concrete that's been doing, that's been self-performed, CIL tanks, reagent storage. We have over 2,500 people on site today. Water storage facility, as I mentioned earlier, the road that goes from Koné to Gbongogo, the 35 kilometer stretch, was also commissioned last year. Tailing storage facility has all been cleared and will start to be lined later this year. Airstrip is in place. Things are progressing very well. The resettlement camp was finished significantly ahead of schedule, and people will start coming in, moving in in the coming months. In terms of upcoming catalysts, as I mentioned, we're drilling 120,000 meters this year.
We expect drill results, but more so updated resources throughout the next month and into next year as we deliver that one million ounces at 50% better grades. We also expect to publish the results of the advanced grade control later this year. In addition, we've been working on building out the pipeline on the exploration front. We're looking at getting other permits into the portfolio. Of course, the big catalyst being the first gold pour, latest Q2 2027, with potential to bring that in by the end of next year. With Montage, you obviously have exposure in Montage, but also indirect exposure to certain investments that we've done in the last seven to nine months or so. Montage has a 9.9% stake in Aurum Resources. Aurum Resources has 2.5 million ounces just immediately north of our project. We see strong synergies there. We're drilling 120,000 meters on our property.
They're drilling 100,000 meters on theirs. Over 220,000 meters being drilled in a 100 kilometer stretch along the belt. African Gold, we're the operator, close to 20% stake. Since we've joined, the resource has doubled to one million ounces at 2.5 grams per ton. Sanyu Resources, close to 20% stake. That's early stage grounds in Guinea. As per Matt that was here, we like West Africa and we think Guinea is a good place to operate as well. We're keen to grow our presence there through the exploration with Sanyu Resources. In conclusion, our share price has obviously done well in the last 18 months since we joined, but we came from a very low base.
When you take a look at our current valuations, we're trading at less than two times cash flows, whereas producers in the region trade more between six and, you know, nine, ten times cash flows. We see a strong re-rate as we continue to progress on our build and get into production. We also have exposure, of course, to the exploration success on Koné, the greenfields properties that we're looking to bring in, and longer term, the ability to be able to replicate this success across other assets in the region. With that, hopefully there's still time for questions.
Thank you very much, Martin. I mean, quite a project. Any questions from the floor, please? Just a quick question on social license to operate. You've got a resettlement there and everything. Has that all gone to plan? Are there any issues on that? How do you see you're going to create value out of that?
The exploration team before we joined had already built up a strong presence with local communities. We were very welcome to join, you know, to progress our project forward. In Côte d'Ivoire, it's fairly regulated. We're able to get through land compensation fairly quickly. The buildings, as you saw, the housings that were built, we basically build a model home. You get the feedback, etc. You do the city, the town layouts. There are iterations that go into it. They're very happy and eager to move into their new home. The social aspects are very good. For the short story, you might have seen me dressed in funny outfits here, but I got re-baptized Koné Souman, which basically means, you know, after their founding ancestors. It's kind of a way to welcome us as part of their community, which shows the strong relations that we have there.
That's why we've been able to move the project forward because we had strong support at the, you know, obviously government level, but also at the local stakeholder level.
Thank you. Any other questions?
On the stream payments with Wheaton Precious Metals, I mean, are those capped, I guess? It seemed like I remember when they did the thing, they were talking about having penalties in there if y'all were late on stuff, but you're talking about prepaying things?
Yeah, it's not capped because they have exposure on those two deposits. There's a 5% tail on any new discoveries done on Koné and Gbongogo. In our case, we see more of the exploration potential on bringing new deposits in rather than growing Koné and Gbongogo.
Martin, I just want a very quick question from me. In this afternoon's session, there's been a lot of talk about new mines in Côte d'Ivoire, the growth of the sector. How do you develop your team? How do you find skilled people?
I need to be careful because there's Endeavour Mining in the room and there's others.
You stole my head, Chef.
We haven't yet used a recruiter, which is nice. I think it's been largely a question of getting the band back together on the exploration or construction side. I think what we've done is something special in Côte d'Ivoire, and we've been able to attract a lot of Ivorians to come work for us. There's a handful of expats, but you know, there's eight mines now operating in the country. There's all the skill sets you need that's already been locally trained. Given the project is of scale, it's one of the largest being built in West Africa, the largest in the country, there's a big sense of pride to try and come work for Montage, which has served us well to ramp up as quick as we've done.
Martin, thank you very much and good luck to you.