To discuss the opportunity at Gaspé and the path forward.
Thanks very much, and good afternoon, everybody. The Gaspé project is really the latest iteration of what we've done as a group over the last 23 years. Originally, Sean Roosen, Robert Wares, and I started Osisko Mining Corporation, which we were forced to sell in 2014 after the hostile and Canadian Malartic. What we've done over the years, if you look collectively at the ounces we defined and the ounces that have subsequently been defined and will be defined, I'm certain, at the Malartic complex, we've been responsible for the discovery of about 70 million ounces of gold or about CAD 500 billion worth of new wealth creation. This project we're currently working on, Gaspé, I think is going to be the largest scale new wealth creator, certainly one of the biggest ones that we've done ever.
I like to call it the Canadian Malartic of copper because there are so many similarities to what we did about 20 years ago with the Canadian Malartic project and the Gaspé project. The current CEO is Robert Wares. I'm the executive chairman. Don Njegovan, who joined us in 2015, did most of the real work at Windfall, is our company president. These deposits that we've worked on and developed over the years are all now in the hands of significant large senior mining companies. I like to joke around that when we started, Sean and I had a conversation about what type of company we'd like to be, and we emulated Agnico Eagle because we thought we could be the next intermediate mining company in Canada like Agnico Eagle. But as it turns out, Agnico Eagle is the next Agnico Eagle.
They've done very well now and certainly are the standout in the gold business. The Gaspé project is really a repetition of what we've done over the years. Our operation playbook has been to go into existing mining camps and try and find things that people have overlooked or maybe errors that were made or just look at it with a different set of inputs using different metal prices. This one particularly is interesting because it's where Robert Wares started his career after he came out of McGill. He actually worked for Noranda, in what was a 44-year mine life. He spent four years there in the early 1990s re-logging all this historic drill core, and doing work underground and led them to the discovery of the second deeper porphyry, which we call DPEX.
Really, I remember when we were developing Canadian Malartic, to fast-forward a little bit, with Bob and Sean, and Bob kept talking to us about this Gaspé copper project. Sean and I kept saying, "Shut up. It's copper, Bob. It's not important." But what Bob realized, ultimately, when he took this into Osisko, what we call Osisko Metals after the takeover, I went and did Windfall. Sean carried on with the royalty company, and Bob did base metals. But he realized that there was an opportunity to repeat what we did at Canadian Malartic at the Gaspé project. He was aware that there was a lot of disseminated mineralization that was understood to be there but had just never been quantified.
Really, the bulk of the work we did at Canadian Malartic, because again, when we started, everyone knew there was about a gram everywhere, but nobody quantified it or took into account the change in metal prices, the change in technology that allowed you to mine at a larger scale. Bob just started that program, when he acquired the property from Glencore and proved through a compilation of the old work and his new drilling that there was at least 500 m illion tons at about 0.3% copper there, which was an interesting starting point. He did some more work and brought that up to 1.5 billion tons at about 0.3% copper, which is when after we sold Windfall to Gold Fields, we merged our two teams together, did a big financing in late 2024, and accelerated the program.
Our most recent resource and current resource in all categories, about 2.1 billion tons at about 0.3% copper. We're finishing that work this year. We expect a resource update in November and then the final resource in March. You don't have long to wait for it, but we expect to end up somewhere between, call it 3.5 and perhaps 4 billion tons for the scale of the system. This is truly a world-class copper system, low-grade bulk tonnage, and again, what I like to refer to as the Canadian Malartic of copper. The difference between this project and many of the other near-term copper projects is it comes with full infrastructure. Because it was an operational mine, under Noranda for 44 years, there are roads that exist that we don't have to build or permit. The deep sea all year round access port is in place.
We don't have to permit or build. The power corridor is in place. We don't have to permit or build. Not to mention the cost. We're probably saving something north of CAD 2 billion of infrastructure cost. But like Canadian Malartic, and again, it was always our method of operation as a group over the last couple of decades, the focus on existing mining camps saves you a lot of time from first drill hole to first pour, whether it's gold or copper. Malartic, from our first drill hole to our first gold pour, was six years and one month on a billion-dollar mine build. It was an incredibly quick project, but that infrastructure allowed us to do it, and I think we're going to see that happen again here. What we're currently projecting is production by 2031, 2032.
That most recent resource we put out earlier this spring gets us to the top of the pack. These are really the near-term development projects in the Americas, trading at higher multiples than we are, despite the fact that we have more contained copper. By the time we finish our current drill program, we should be something well north of 20 billion pounds of contained copper. But again, on that fabulous infrastructure, Quebec also has the lowest power rates or certainly lower power rates compared to, say, B.C., where traditionally most of the copper mining is done in Canada. We're at 5.5 cents Tarif L power versus 8 cents. This deposit's got a probably superior strip ratio to the existing mines out there, which are all mining at a rate of about 4:1 strip or 5:1 strip.
The current strip on our resource is about 1.5:1, and we expect that to go down to 1:1 by the time we finish our work. We own about 10% of the company. There is about 30% corporate ownership, Agnico Eagle, Hudbay, Glencore, and Franco. This was an entirely retail-owned shareholder base about two years ago, and that's flipped now to the point where it's probably about 10% retail, and the balance is corporates or institutions. A lot of coverage on the company for any of you who want to look at some of the research work. This slide shows the property as it stands today. There were about 150 million tons processed by Noranda, half of it from underground, half of it from open pit.
Effectively, everything that you see in this slide will end up being in a large super pit, which is probably going to go about four kilometers long, a kilometer at the lip and down to 900 meters of depth. The current resource in red, this is our global 2.1 billion tons. The green dots are the holes from last year. The yellow dots are newer holes from this year's program, some in progress. The dashed yellow line is the outline of the pit shell as it would be on that red resource. We're finishing the drilling right now. Currently, we expect to be done by December. That white shape on the bottom is where we're seeing great expansion of the deposit. We had more results out today. There'll be a lot more out this fall.
We expect to add about 500 m illion to a billion tons from that area. It's pit shaped, shallow mineralization starts at surface, so there's zero strip. It's shaping up to be the potential starter pit area at about 25% higher grade than the global 0.3%. So this starter pit area may end up as a 0.4 resource. It's the reason the strip drops because when blended with the rest of it, that brings the 1.5 to one strip down to 1:1. A geological cross-section showing the porphyry, Copper Mountain porphyry, which was mined in a small open pit by Noranda. Effectively what they were after, though, were what we call the C and E Zones, or they called the C and E Zones. These were high-grade zones up to over 100 meters wide of 1%-2% copper.
It explains why the deposit was still there for us to be found and acquired. Noranda drilled in the light blue areas, which are calcareous sediments which host the disseminated mineralization. In the 1990s and 1980s, they weren't interested in 0.3 material. It didn't make sense at CAD 0.65 copper. Largely, though they knew that the disseminated material was there, most of the core was never assayed. We've done some re-assaying of that, and certainly our program has been drilling it off, and this is where the bulk of the billions of tons come from. The majority of their mining was by underground methods on the C and E Zones, and about half came out of the open pit. There's another recent section from some of our drill results. The shaded area is the pit on the current MRE.
Just to show some of the numbers as we step out to the southwest and the expanse of the deposit. Ultimately, it will be deeper than this one and a larger pit. This diagram shows the resource in green and yellow. This is the 2 billion ton global resource. The second porphyry was discovered starting with the work Bob did. He realized there was a second alteration zone that didn't match the current porphyry. Noranda drilled about 20 holes into this and defined approximately 500 m illion tons of 0.7% copper. There is also moly and silver, so as an equivalent, that would be about a 1% number. Again, not interesting to them in the 1990s when the price of copper was CAD 0.65. But now considering that we are looking at a super pit that will go down to 900 meters, it about touches the top of this.
Ultimately at the end of the pit mine life, you would be able to ramp into this and block cave it. Some of the work we are doing now suggests that the two are potentially connected. We expect that with the drilling that we have ongoing right now with our DPEX program, that certainly will confirm and add some information to that 500 m illion tons of 0.7% and potentially get that up to somewhere between 500 million to a billion tons globally. So when we put that together with what we think we will end up with this 3 billion ton resource on the main pit, the system scale is about 4 billion tons. What we are looking at is a large long life mine. Our throughput assumptions currently are at about 160,000 tons a day. We are a smaller company.
Certainly, I think if we were a larger copper miner, we wouldn't bother. We would start at somewhere like 220,000, 240,000. We will model those assumptions by the time we get to the PEA. I suspect finally, once we finish the resource work, we will probably settle on a throughput number, assuming something north of 200,000, which will mean that we will join the ranks. Instead of being a high Tier 2, we will actually be a Tier 1 copper producer north of 200,000 tons of copper per year. Recoveries are good. There are 44 years of met test work done by Noranda, the 150 million tons.
Our met work is confirming in the areas that they didn't have met work from in the porcellanites, what we call the porcellanites, which are the silicified sediments that host the disseminated sulfide coming in effectively the same as the recoveries from the general deposit.
We have had long strong local support. The center picture is a shot of the minister and some of his group that came down the project last year. Put out their own press release about their support for the opening of a new mine. We have been doing lots of consultations with the town of Murdochville. Murdochville was built by Noranda when they had the mine in operation from the 1950s until the 1990s. It was a purpose-built mine town. Much of the population has moved away since the mine closed in the late 1990s. But there are approximately 400 homes in the town that we may, depending on the scale of the operation, be looking at having to do something with. It is not certain until we come out with our PEA, ultimately, what the pit shell outline is going to look like.
But there is a consideration that some of the homes, similar to Malartic, may have to be moved out of the way. Our timelines are complete the work by Christmastime, come out with that ultimate resource by the end of Q1 in next year. You do not have to wait long to see what we decide is the ultimate scale of both the deposit and the throughput. The PEA will follow about four months post that. That allows us to file the project description, which is the official start of permitting. On an ideal timeline, and everyone knows in the mining business, everything works on an ideal timeline, we would come out of permitting in late 2029, a couple of years to build. We are estimating about a CAD 5 billion CapEx right now. Then we would be producing concentrates by the end of 2031, early 2032.
Again, it would be about 35 B-train trucks down to the Port of Gaspé to ship what we estimated would be, in our low-case scenario, 500,000 tons of concentrate per year, going to Glencore. Glencore, when we acquired the project, kept the full offtake. So we know, and as a benefit to us, what the offtake pricing looks like, and it is a very standard agreement.
At the rate of 500,000 tons of con per year, this is 26% copper con and has silver and moly. We would, by our initial calculations, be netting about a CAD 1 billion free cash flow per year at about CAD 4 copper, CAD 4.50 copper. So at CAD 5 copper, CAD 6, CAD 7 copper, it is more than double what we saw as free cash flow coming from Canadian Malartic when we turned that operation on in 2011. Gives you a sense of the scale.
As a group, we have done projects like this before in Quebec. This is certainly larger, but we have done large truck, large shovel, large open-pit operations. People forget that we ran Canadian Malartic for the first 1.2 million ounces as an operation before we were forced to sell it, so it is something we are familiar with. We have a strong balance sheet, pro forma, the rest of the warrants that come in from our original and only financing of about CAD 154 million. Certainly, this is, if our plans come through the way that we have them on paper right now, going to be Canada's largest copper producer in about six or seven years' time. Certainly going into these old camps as a way to look at the projects has worked very well for Osisko in the past.
This is really a repetition of what we did at Canadian Malartic 20 years ago on a slightly larger scale. At that point, I will end my presentation. Thank you.
Great. Thank you. With that, we have a few minutes. Anybody, questions?
Thank you. With the higher cap on earnings, are you optimizing surface subsidence around the property?
Thank you, John. New Brunswick?
New Brunswick, yeah. About a week or so ago, we announced a spin-out of other properties that we had have in, and we still currently have in Osisko Metals. It is currently 100% owned subsidiary, and we announced that we were going to go to market for CAD 100 million financing and had a tremendous amount of interest, so we upsized the deal to CAD 250 million. The properties in New Brunswick are largely properties that we staked.
We optioned some others to fill out some gaps we had. Really what that is an extension of the identical geology that hosts Gaspé, with hosting also identical Devonian age porphyries and lots of indications of copper, disseminated low-grade copper around in both porphyries and sediments that if you took the rocks and some of the drill core that was done on maybe a dozen holes in the area over time, including some by Noranda, while they were operating Gaspé Copper, and also not assayed, you wouldn't be able to distinguish them from the Gaspé deposit. It's a target, it's an exploration target, and the intent there is to go and do a large program to see if there is actually a porphyry hiding under this principal anomaly. That anomaly is also one of 22 on the project.
The rest of them have had no work. It's funny, and we've seen this time and time again looking for new projects within the group, how exploration concepts tend to stop at provincial boundaries, but geology doesn't and potential doesn't. This is really just an untested extension of the belt that never saw any work for bulk tonnage porphyry deposits. It's understandable. Even Noranda, when they owned Gaspé, did not contemplate a very large throughput, like 150,000 ton a day operation. Xstrata, when they had it, drilled some holes, but they were, again, only looking for more high-grade C Zone and E Zone and even Glencore, same thing. None of the core they drilled really was assayed or very little of it. It took that experience with Canadian Malartic, where it was, well, what if it all is 0.3, and how much is there?
Copper price has not hurt. That's New Brunswick.
Time for one more.
The question is how does it benefit Osisko Metals shareholders? Quite simply, it allows us to. Osisko Metals will retain approximately 10% of the new company. Should we find something, and even if we don't, it allows the company to mark to market what the value of those shares are, which right now, I would argue, are worth nothing. The value of these other deposits, and it's happened to us time and again with our group companies, when you define the world-class deposit, everything else in your portfolio gets valued as nothing. Ultimately, unfortunately, and fortunately in some cases, what's happened is if you end up in an M&A discussion and your company is sold, those assets travel to the new acquirer for nothing.
You as a shareholder, and remember, we've always been big shareholders of our companies, you get no benefit from it. Perhaps it's a little bit of preemptive thinking, but it's something that we've done repeatedly and successfully with the other companies in the past. Certainly it allows us to retain the focus at Gaspé on Gaspé, while this other new company goes and does that exploration work. That's pretty much it.
Great. Thanks.
Just as a final word, the prime example was when we were forced to sell Canadian Malartic, we also sold Odyssey and Upper Beaver and Hammond Reef and all these other things, which we sold the company for CAD 4.3 billion in 2014, and I think last quarter Agnico made CAD 4.3 billion on Canadian Malartic. These were things where tremendous value was left behind because they went in a sale vehicle.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you.