Thank you, Paul, and thank you, everyone, for joining. It's a pleasure to be with you. Although I'm enduring the Montreal and lithium winters, it truly is a pleasure to be here. This highlights why I believe Patriot and our Shaakapuuwaanaan project will be one of the most important lithium and critical mineral development projects in the coming years. I’ll also share some insights about what it means to work in Quebec. I've learned a lot about Canada and Quebec during my time there, and there are many things to appreciate about Quebec as a mining jurisdiction.
Lastly, I’d like to share some comments about the future of lithium the lithium world and why I still think it’s an important place to be. It’s a great sector to work in and, ultimately, a very good time to be invested for the future growth to come. At Patriot, for those who may not be completely familiar with the story, our Shackatuwannan Project is located in north-central Quebec. It’s far enough north to be considered reasonably remote, but it’s not isolated from infrastructure. When you’re in the hard rock lithium world, having access to infrastructure is clearly very important. Fortunately, our Shaakapuuwaanaan discovery is only about 40 kilometers from one of the largest hydro dams in Quebec. As a result, there’s plenty of available power.
There's road infrastructure built to support a massive hydro development scheme. There are airports, and we’ve developed our own significant camp and access road in support of what we expect to be a major project in the hard rock lithium world. When you’re exploring for lithium, the geologists will tell you that you’re looking for your LCT pegmatites that’s lithium, cesium, tantalum pegmatites. What we have at Shaakapuuwaanaan has proven to be absolutely outstanding in each of those categories. We have the largest hard rock lithium resource across the Americas, and our expectation is that if we keep drilling, the resource base will continue to grow. Some portions of it are incredibly high grade, and I’ll have a bit more to say about that later. That’s the lithium.
In the cesium category, we’ve announced a discovery that surpasses anything historically found. We’ve identified about 2.3 million tonnes in resource, with subsets that are extremely high grade. In fact, the highest-grade pod, at about 10.5% cesium oxide, is larger than today’s largest resource. It’s incredible what’s happened in the world of cesium and our discovery. I’ll explain more about why that’s important. Lastly, the tantalum it’s a very important co-product, and it’s also high grade. Each of these elements highlights how exceptional the geology at Shaakapuuwaanaan truly is. It’s an incredible and significant critical minerals discovery, especially at a time when the critical minerals story is so important to the West.
In summary, we have the right geology, and we’re now focused on delivering the project with discipline. The lithium-only feasibility study is not far away it will be completed during the current quarter and will outline what it means to deliver a major lithium project at our CV5 resource. For now, it doesn’t include the cesium and tantalum, but those will come during the detailed engineering phase. The economic upside we expect from the combination of cesium and tantalum will follow in that next stage. To explain how good this geology really is, I’ll make an analogy and I’m not going to apologize for it.
Shaakapuuwaanaan in lithium is comparable to Greenbushes, the gold standard in the hard rock lithium world. Our overall resource is about the same around 1.4% lithia, with certain areas reaching very high grades. There are 25 million tonnes of contiguous resource inside CV5, grading at 2% lithia as mined, even after dilution. For comparison, Greenbushes mines around 1.8% lithia. It’s truly outstanding and will be a key contributor to the project’s long-term success. It really is that good in the lithium world. And it doesn’t stop there coming back to cesium, we’ve made a new discovery, and I’ll explain why we think it’s important.
The scale of the discovery we’ve made makes everything else look small in comparison. There are two key zones the Rygal and the Vega zones at our CV13 deposit, which is located about three to four kilometers west of the main CV5 deposit. At CV13, we’ve identified concentrations of pollucite mineralization. Pollucite is to cesium what spodumene is to lithium you can think of them in a similar way. We’re targeting the pollucite mineralization, and a subset of it, the Rygal zone, is incredibly high grade. It contains about 160,000 tonnes at just over 10% cesium. That’s direct-shipping pollucite material that can go straight to the chemical plant. It’s already larger than the next biggest cesium resource globally, at least among published ones. The scale of this discovery is truly remarkable.
It really is significant. Now, why is that important? Cesium today, the cesium market is in effect supply constrained. The resources are 100% controlled by the Chinese. 100%. They own every mine, pretty much every primary mine globally. If you're wondering about concentration risk, the cesium world is the pure definition, and they control about 80 to 90% of the chemical capacity. When people think about the cesium market and its uses today, the oil and gas industry for heavy media, deep drilling, the medical imaging industry, it's a subset of the optoelectrical industry, they think about a lack of cesium supply. With the sort of discovery that we've made, there's an opportunity to completely change the game for supply in terms of abundance, but also in respect of diminishing that risk in the China supply chain, i.e., a truly independent Western supply chain making cesium abundant.
That's important because of the solar world. Today, the silicon matrix that's in your average solar panel represents the pinnacle for the delivery. Efficiency of about 25% conversion of light to electricity. In the last 10 to 15 years, researchers started to center on these so-called perovskite crystal structures. It just so happens that the most efficient of those perovskite crystal structures includes cesium. You get a massive boost in solar efficiency. You go from 24%, 25% conversion of electricity to light, you go to 35%. A really big boost. However, no one's been prepared to deploy that technology. It's largely ready to go at a demonstration scale because of the issues around abundance of cesium and the concentration risk running through the China supply chain. If you can change that, the addressable market for cesium grows substantially.
In papers that you read around the application of these perovskite structures, you could potentially grow the market 10 to 20 times in terms of cesium demand. The discovery itself is a really important lever through the value and growth in the market. What do we do about it? The first step is to publish an almighty resource, an amazing discovery, and now to engage with the industry downstream to try and work out the best place to play. How do you get into these incredibly high-value compounds that include cesium, such that you can grow the market into terrestrial solar, and especially for Western markets? This is the future. There's a lot more work to be done, but the first thing is to have an almighty discovery, and we've definitely got that. Watch this space. In the feasibility study, we're getting close.
It's not too far away, and it'll be the lithium-only CV5 study with more optimization to come. In Quebec, I somewhat jokingly refer to Quebec as French-speaking Western Australia. You want to be in Quebec, you want to be in the James Bay region, it's a bit like being in WA. You don't want to be developing a mine in New South Wales if you can avoid it. Quebec's at the better end of the spectrum. By the way, as an aside, First Nations engagement, absolutely first class in the James Bay region with the Cree. If you're after a model for treaties, modern treaties to define success for First Nations and success for industry, the James Bay region is the place to look.
Actually, in Australia, we should be paying attention to what's happening with respect to First Nations engagement there because it's a giant leap forward compared to most of where we are here in Australia. It's a good place to be working, and we're happy to continue to keep progressing our project. A few comments about lithium. Are we too cautious on lithium demand? Of course, it's a leading question. The answer is yes, we are. We are. We're definitely being too cautious on demand. There's a good example to follow. In solar, nobody got solar application rates anywhere near right. Year on year, everybody was upgrading their outlook, and they still didn't get it right. On the right-hand side of the graph there, we followed the World Energy Outlook through the International Energy Agency. Year on year, the forecasts were all too low.
This is exactly what's happening in the battery world. I want to particularly focus on stationary energy storage. We are grossly underestimating just how many lithium-ion batteries are going to make it into stationary energy storage applications. It pretty much follows that path from solar. We've seen this movie before. China lowers the cost of the panels much faster than Western analysts can ever forecast, and as a result, everyone buys them. It's a pretty simple story, isn't it? It's exactly that phenomenon that's underway now in the lithium-ion battery world. Actually, the evidence points to it as well. Most analysts are forecasting 20% growth for 2025 in lithium raw material demand. June 30 has just come and gone. Cars were at 28%, or EVs were at 28% growth, and stationary energy storage was at just over 50% growth. The whole sector has come upgrades on the demand side.
What do you draw from that? The industry is going to move back to a more natural state of demand outstripping supply much faster than the Western analysts are currently giving it credit for. That's the real outcome that you're going to see. EV sales, I know people sort of talk about, let's say, North American EV sales as though it's some sort of horror story and Trump's, you know, creating havoc. Elon's been an idiot, and it's all bad news. It doesn't matter. North America is not the main game. That was never the main game from a lithium raw material demand point of view. It's all about the rest of the world. The rest of the world is going gangbusters. Have a look at how many BYD sharks are on the road in Australia. In stationary energy storage, I'm going to double down on those comments.
Growth in the June quarter was 120% plus annualized growth. In fact, in June, it was about 200% growth month, year to year. There's a reasonable chance that in stationary energy storage, we are actually still accelerating. This market is going to be much bigger than the EV market, much bigger. Global energy networks need to be stabilized, and we need to smooth the available power. We need a lot more energy, of course, but a lot of it's about peaks. The benefit in a battery is you can deal with those peaks by storing energy during the rest of the day, whether it's a fossil fuel equation or a renewable energy equation. We are underestimating this whole stationary energy storage phenomenon, and I think the evidence is pointing towards that. In summary, I'm really proud to be working with a fantastic team in Montreal.
The Quebecois, it's a highly diverse mining economy, and it's pretty rich in history and experience, much like Western Australia. They're doing a better job with First Nations engagement. You've got a one-stop shop through combined approvals that link sole First Nations in the James Bay region with the approvals process, and our team has done that in spades. I'm really pleased to be working with them. In summary, we will keep drilling, albeit not at the scale we've done historically. There's a good chance there's going to be more discoveries because it is an incredibly, it's an amazing piece of geology. We're going to keep pushing forward with CV5 development, albeit lithium only at this point in time, but with more blue sky to be opened up with the other critical minerals that are there in abundance, cesium and tantalum. Thanks very much, ladies and gentlemen.
Lovely to be with you.
Thank you, Ken.
Next up we have Rowena Smith. Rowena is the Managing Director and CEO of Australian Strategic Materials. She's been in the resources sector for 30 years in operational, commercial, and strategy roles with the likes of BHP and South 32. This is Rowena's third time taking to the stage at Diggers and Dealers. A fun fact about Rowena is her first business venture was in her late teens making cakes for cafes, and her specialty was making the croquembouche for people's weddings. If you think that's pretty challenging, running ASM must be, I'm going to say it, it's going to be a piece of cake. Please welcome Rowena to the stage, everyone. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Paul. I can say that I did learn early the difficulty of starting a business without having properly thought through labor rates and profit margins. That lesson was well learned. Thank you very much for having me here today, and particularly thanks for the opportunity for us to tell the ASM story. We are in exciting times at the moment in the rare earths industry, and that's what we do here at ASM. We're building a global rare earths and critical minerals business to meet the needs of those downstream markets that are emerging in the Western world. It has been a very eventful year. The geopolitical uncertainty, which we've been hearing a lot about, has definitely created opportunity for those of us in rare earths.
The vulnerability of this supply chain and how dominated it is by Chinese production, over 90% of the midstream processing, the refining, the metallization, the alloying, and the magnet production, over 90% of that is controlled in China. That vulnerability has been known for some time, but it hasn't really been felt. What we saw with the Liberation Day and with the tariff sort of events that have been happening in recent months is we saw that shift to an urgency around establishing these alternative supply chains. In particular, the first response that China had when they received notification of the increased tariffs from the U.S.
was they put export restrictions on all of the heavy rare earth materials that were coming out of China, which is pretty much 100% of the world's production at the moment, as well as the specialist alloys, the NDFEB alloys that are the major constituent for the magnets, as well as the magnets. What that then has set in train is a chain of events where not just the U.S. is very focused on how are they going to establish continuity for these supply chains so that they're emerging magnet producers and, importantly, the users of those magnets, the car manufacturers, the robotics, the defense industries, you know, how are they going to ensure that they're going to have security of supply.
They've certainly been active, but so has the EU, so has Korea, so has Japan, and where we had seen a lot of talk in recent times, in the last few months, we've really seen it drive to action. This is ideally positioned for ASM strategy. We have a strategy to go from mine all the way through to metal, and our strategy anticipated this shift in the world dynamic some time ago. We've been working on it for a while, and it's nice that we are ready now to be able to fully take advantage of this shift in that global dynamic. We have an advanced project in New South Wales. I don't agree with Ken that New South Wales isn't a great jurisdiction, even though I am a Perth girl, so there's no doubt I love WA.
We feel very, very pleased to be working there in New South Wales with our Dubbo mine, where we will refine and separate those materials to be able to be taking them through to one of our metals plants. The first metals plant we already have in production in Korea that's been producing since 2022, but we've also got very advanced plans to be able to replicate that capacity in the United States. These are the product lines, as I said before, that are going into all those advanced manufacturing industries that are so dependent. What we have been celebrating in recent times is real progress on a number of fronts. The Korean metals plant, particularly in recent months since those restrictions that we saw imposed by China, has had a huge influx of inquiries, so we're busy ramping up our facility there.
We have been broadening our product range and just had success with our first heavy rare earth metallisation there, which I will talk to, as well as, as I said before, well progressed on our expansion plans into the United States. We've also recently had a really good look at how we could accelerate the rare earth production for Dubbo and bring that online faster, but also really lower that initial capital hurdle, which I think has been a constraint for us in getting Dubbo into production to date. We've just been to market with the support of Canaccord and just had great, great support from our established investors, shareholders, as well as some really exciting new participants in our register.
Just under $25 million, which adds to the $19 million that we had at year-end, which means we've got a really good cash position to be able to focus this year on getting in and delivering. This is the plant in Korea that I said we established. It's been in production since 2022. We built this through the COVID period. We're very proud of this facility. It's been producing light rare earth NDPR metal since 2022, and then since 2023, we have been making that NDFEB alloy, that specialist alloy that goes to the magnet facilities. We built this plant ahead of the rest of the ecosystem in Western countries being there, so the ramp-up at this facility has really been constrained by the magnet producers establishing themselves outside of China.
That's why the dynamic just recently has been so exciting for us because we've gone through the product validation processes on both our metals and alloys with numerous producers in Korea, in Japan, in North America, and in Europe. What we've seen in recent weeks is those orders starting to come in. Novion Magnetics, that's an emerging U.S. producer in Texas. We've got a 100-ton agreement in place with them. First deliveries, first 15 tonnes, has just started to go out last month. Vacuumschmelze, a German-established magnet producer who also has got funding from the U.S. government to replicate a facility in the States in South Carolina. We've got first orders from them commenced last month across an array of these alloy products.
USA Rare Earth, they just listed earlier this year and are in a very strong capital position now to be able to progress their plan, their commissioning, their magnet facility at the moment in Oklahoma. We've got a five-year framework, sorry, a five-year supply agreement for them to supply 60% of their raw material needs. Indeed, we've just sent them samples to support them on this early part of their commissioning, but they'll be ramping up through next year. Very excited to have announced just in recent weeks the MOU with Neo Performance Materials, MagnaQuench, which is their magnet division. They have operations in China, in Thailand, and they're just, in fact, doing a grand opening of their new facility in Estonia next month.
We've been delivering them the light rare earth metal, but one of the reasons they're particularly interested in broadening out the relationship into something that is a longer-term and more collaborative arrangement is because of our capability to metallize heavy rare earths. I only know of one other producer who is able to provide that technology outside of China commercially at the moment. For those who've got access to heavy rare earth oxides and they need the metals to be able to make their magnets, we are a very unique capability partner. Excited about the conversations with Neo. Some of those customers have got their own oxides that we will toll-treat for them. Others need us to purchase it. We've got arrangements in place with providers from Australia, as well as the U.S. and Europe for Western-sourced oxides to be able to support growth here in this facility.
The facility has currently got installed capacity of 600 tonnes of metal and 1,300 tonnes of alloy. We've spent about $60 million U.S. there at the moment. We have got a pathway design capacity to take that up to 3,600 tonnes. Importantly, we are working on that additional product capability to be able to do the terbium and the dysprosium and got really good economics here for when it is at full capacity, which we're anticipating could be in 2027. Expanding this into the U.S. is one of the exciting stories that we've got. We are well progressed on this at the moment. We've been talking to the DOD about funding support. We have just had actually a due diligence trip to the States. We've been looking at six different states, but we're narrowing that down to the top two states over the next few months.
What we're seeing in the U.S. is that the policy is extremely supportive of putting this facility into that jurisdiction. We are seeing that not just at the federal, but actually at the state level, very strong competition to having this facility put into their own jurisdiction. Again, we're thinking that the economics of this will look similar to what we have seen in Korea. I think actually we'll see it'll be a lower cost operation than what we've got in Korea. We're going through that process of finalizing state selection and talking with DOD about funding. We've got a formal submission in with them that we're hoping that we'll hear back this side of Christmas on. All going well, we will then progress with making a commitment decision on that next year, and it's commencing construction in 2027.
Dubbo, our resource in New South Wales, is a very important part of the story as well because these metals plants need feed. Whilst there are a number of light rare earth projects that are starting to develop outside of China, there are very few that are rich in heavy rare earths. You need those heavy rare earths to be able to make these specialist alloys for these magnets. Dubbo is a polymetallic. It has the light rare earth, neodymium praseodymium, but it also has the terbium and the dysprosium and zirconia, niobium, and hafnia. All the study work that we've done to date, and we've been working on this for 20 years, and I'm sure many of you have heard the story before, all was working on a full flow sheet that brought all of those products to market simultaneously. It had a lot of advantages.
It's a very big resource. It's a 75 million-ton resource. It's in a Tier 1 jurisdiction. It is regional rather than remote. It is fully approved to be able to proceed. We have done many, many, many years of work on the technologies to be able to do the separation and refining with ANSTO, as well as working with Bechtel on the final engineering. We feel very strongly about the quality of this project. The $1.7 billion starting price has been tough, particularly for a company of our market cap. What we challenged ourselves last year is could we find a lower cost pathway to accelerate the rare earth production? We got some federal funding to support us on that, and we just released the scoping study on that a couple of weeks ago. We're really excited about this.
We've identified that the heat leach option does give us a simplified flow sheet with substantially reduced upfront capital. It's less than 50% of what the original capital was, low operating costs, and robust financials. When you look at it specifically, one of the things that we're particularly excited about is that this brings us those three products that the market really needs at the moment, the light rare earths, but also a high volume of the terbium and the dysprosium for less than three quarters of a billion dollars in capital. The costs for all three of those products sit well within the first quartile of costs for Western suppliers for these materials. Across a range of pricing forecasts, we're seeing robust internal rate of returns. The funding position has been a focus for us for some time.
While we were seeing the $1.7 billion initial outlay for capital being challenging, we were nonetheless getting very strong support from governments across the Western countries to be able to provide us with debt support. We've got over $1.5 billion worth of conditional ECA support for this project. What we've been doing as we've been going through doing this heat leach scoping study is continuing to talk with them about being able to resize that to be able to support the heat leach first phase. They're very supportive of this approach. They like the de-risking that this provides, that we can get those first three products up into production early, and then we can use the revenue from that to be able to go on and do further development and access the rest of the materials in the ore body as a second phase.
We also are seeing that it's simplified the offtake discussion. At the same time that the market is really actively looking now to secure light rare earths and heavy rare earths all the way from mine, we have got the opportunity to be able to provide a project that, you know, is a much simpler proposition and lower cost proposition for them to invest in. We are able to offer them a solution that takes it all the way from mine all the way through to alloy for them and solve those parts of the supply chain that are challenging for them as well. We're working now on completing the common leach testing and refining the CapEx and OpEx estimates to complete the PFS study by Q1 of next year. That keeps us on track for being able to commence construction there in Dubbo in 2027. That is ASM.
We are the only ASX-listed company that will give you exposure to rare earths all the way from mine to metal. We are the only ones who are producing light rare earth metals and alloys today. We've got lots coming up in the next year to watch out for. Thanks very much for your time today.
Next up, we have a very exciting story from Rox Resources, a company I formerly covered with research from Canaccord. Phil Wilding is the Managing Director at Rox. Phil has a mining engineering background and has spent almost 12 years at Westgold prior to joining Rox. What you don't know about Phil is that he actually wanted to be a fighter pilot, but at 6'4", he grew a bit too tall, couldn't fit into the planes, so he chose something far more exciting in mining. It's Phil's first time on stage at Diggers and Dealers, so please give him a warm welcome.
Thanks, Paul. Yeah, I guess I've always liked to go fast and try and blow things up, so mining was the good next choice for me. That led me to Rox. Rox's story's had a huge transformation over the last 12 months. July last year, I saw the PFS study came out. Good resource base, strong reserves, awesome cash flows, and really just need to take that next step. That's what we've done over this last year. We are a near-term gold producer. We've hit the accelerator. We're really moving forwards on that story. We've got the grade. We are one of the highest-grade, undeveloped gold assets in Australia. Huge margin out of the PFS, and the upside is what we're going to deliver through our DFS. The highlights in the corporate overview.
Our flagship UME Gold Project, we put out a new mineral resource statement two weeks ago at the Noosa conference. We had an 11% grade upkeep overall. The underground went up 400,000 ounces in both the indicated and the total components, so a 36% increase in the indicated, and that's what will hopefully help push through into our DFS into the reserves. It's still open down dip and along strike. We've got a massive tenement package, let alone the oil zone we have now. We know it still continues. We just got to get more drill holes into it. It'll be an underground gold project, and the economics at today's gold price is over a $3,000 an ounce margin on your only sustaining. Very, very strong. We're de-risked with existing infrastructure. It's a previous operating site. There are three major access roads that are all well maintained.
We've got access to two airstrips, one on our site, one a little bit to the south. We have an existing camp facility. It's got some really good facilities in there. Fully granted mining tenements, existing open pits, rubbish tips, and all our waste is going to stay in pit as well. Previous tailings dams, so a lot of things which are going in place to make our permitting process a lot simpler. We've got a strong cash position. We've got $50.5 million in the bank today, and that was following a placement which we did back in May, which was strongly supported by new shareholders. We're really, we're not a gold price play. This project runs at gold prices much lower than today, and it's because of the ownership of the tenement packages is why this project's finally been able to move forwards.
It was last mined in 1997 at a sub $400 gold price. It fell into various hands. 2018 got consolidated, and we got full control of it back in 2023, and a lot of work's been done since. Going to the growth, with new MRE, this is going to feed into our new mine plan, into reserves, and a DFS which we're targeting delivery of in November of this year. We're still drilling. I've got one rig on the surface now. We had five rigs for most at the start of this year. We're preparing to get into early access to the underground. De-watering is well advanced. We're getting pretty close. The first pit's actually de-watered now. The next one will be done around Christmas. Capital structure, circa 750 million shares on issue, $0.28 share price today at about a $210 million market cap.
From the coverage we have from Canaccord, Urals, and Petra, we're about half our target share prices on their base case. If you go to their long case, which is what they're expecting to say out of our study, we're looking for another three, four times growth if those projections come true. We've been working hard on the register. We've got some really good support from our large shareholders, particularly Hawkes Point Capital, and that's one thing which we're really looking forward to in order to get this project built later this year. In terms of our project, the flagship UME Gold Project, Central Western Australia and the Yulgan Craton, previously mined 670,000 ounces at 5.4 grams a ton, and the underground's at around 8 to 10 on the averages, so very, very strong mineralisation.
About 150 kilometers by road to Mount Magnet, so nicely suited about an hour's flight out of Perth. From our PFS, the key highlights which came out of this now, remember this is July last year. We had a probable ore reserve, 550,000 ounces at 4.4 grams a ton. The mine plan was 850 at four and a half. We entered into a large drill campaign, 11,000 meters of infill drilling to really get that conversion ratio up. What we then saw from that was the opportunity. Where was the growth going to come from? Conceded gaps in the mine plan, the model. We extended drilling through there. We did another 35,000 meters of drilling. That came out with the MRE two weeks ago, as mentioned, but we've got 2.2 million ounces at 5.6 grams a ton overall. 2.1 about six grams is the underground.
PFS production profiles, about 100,000 ounces per annum for nearly eight years. 92.6% average recovery, and that's based on a 750,000 ton plant. Again, we see with the DFS coming up, we're going to see a larger mine plan coming out of it, a bigger mill, higher grades, and higher ounce output. Our cost base, $16.76 an ounce on the only sustaining cost. At today's gold price, that's $3,400-ish margin. It's huge. You look at the cash flows, $1.3 billion at $1,700. It nearly doubles at today's gold price. The payback period's getting down towards 12 months. In terms of the resource itself, the image on the screen there shows the overall picture. We've got a dashed line, which is where we've got a pretty good indication of where the gold is. Inside of that, there's 2.2 million ounces.
Again, underground's 2.1 million at six and the indicated one and a half million at 6.4 grams a ton. The PFS to conversion ratio was circa 50%. If we get that again, we'll add another couple hundred thousand ounces. Hopefully, we can do better. The ounce profile in this project is one of the ones that really attracted me to it, though. It's over 4,000 ounces of vertical meter for the top 300 meters in a mine plan, and we've still got 2,000 ounces of meter at depth, and that's really only limited by drilling. Going back to before, where did the growth come from? We did the infill program, 11,000 meters, and then we hit the growth program.
35,000 meters went into it, and it was all about growing the ore body nearby to the mine plan, so it was areas which would be accessible from the current planned infrastructure. Under United North, the lower left side of that, we've extended that out. UME North, we've got a footprint extension there. Prospect was a new find. Pollard, we've had a little bit of growth come out of that as well. All in all, what we were seeing is really good intercepts and higher grades than what we're seeing in our previous model. That's what flows through into the resource. The reserves in the mine plan again, July last year, this is where the gaps were seen. We could sound United North, there was no reason out to the bottom left side of that image why there's nothing there. Between there and UME Main, another gap.
Prospect was another gap. We filled those in. We're doing the work now, and that's going to come out in an updated DFS. De-watering. This is that path to production. We really want to get this thing going. We have fully licensed evaporation ponds. We refurbished them back in February. Started June, we've got our permits to put the water into our northern pits, and we started pumping. The upper right image is there. You've got UME Main pit on the left. That water's gone down about, looks like seven meters in the last eight weeks. That's progressing pretty well, right on target, and that should be de-watered somewhere around Christmas, January. United North pit there on the right image, that pump's now being turned off because that pit's actually de-watered far enough that we can actually start mining.
Part of our early works program is to get in and cut the deep line so we can get the drill rigs underground and start infilling the mine plan, get greater confidence, and also keep growing the resource. The met test work. The met on this project is one of the things a lot of people have struggled to get their heads around. It is a semi-refractory ore body. Our gold is associated with sulphides, about 92% of it, circa a 10 to 1 ratio under pyrite and arsenic pyrite. To get gold out of pyrite, a fine grind deals with that. The arsenic pyrite needs a bit of oxidation. With the fine grind, a pre-oxidation circuit in there, it's all quite simple. We can get recoveries in the low to mid-90%. We've proven that last year, the test work came out, it confirmed our plan would work.
Work we've got coming up is based on the overall mine plan. We'll know our grind, we'll know our oxidation requirements, we'll know our recoveries in the coming weeks. Waiting on Glencore to deliver that data, and then we can finalize the mill design and actually tell the market, this is going to happen. This is a really simple processing circuit. The technology is out, as technology is known, technology's been proven. We can make this happen. Regionally, Rox has got about 60 kilometers of UME shear zone. In the middle of it, we've got Penny's Remilius's Penny mine, a super high-grade asset it's been producing for the last couple of years. UME Main up to the northern end of it, 670,000 ounces being mined out of there. We've still got 2.2 million ounces known in that zone.
We've got about a 700-meter window between UME and the main shear we've done next to no work on. We've got zones out in the hanging wall of the main ore body that need work. Down towards Penny itself, we've got currents just to the north of it. We've had some really positive hits from an RC program a couple of years ago, and we're following up through that now to understand structurally what's going on through that area. The rest of the tenement package is still very underexplored. There's quite a bit of cover, so there's no deep holes. One thing we want to work through, going through all our aeromag data, geophysics, understand what's there, come up with some better targeting, and really see what we can come up with. All of this leads to our pathway to production.
We put this out late last year, and it's really what we're sticking to, what we're holding ourselves to, to deliver gold in early 2027. Our res dev grade control program, we did that on time, on budget. The MRE, we delivered that as we said in July. We're now working through the mine plan to get that into reserves for the DFS to come out in November this year. Combination flotation on the met done. Alvin test work largely done, just awaiting those results, and we'll get that out to market as soon as possible. The major design components, all that work is well advanced at the moment. Contractors are starting our deliverables and on track for our DFS to come out in November. Approvals-wise, all that's tracking pretty well. We've got our first de-watering permits.
We're expecting our major clearing permit and our underground mining permits to come through this month, so we can actually get in and start mining in the first deep line in October of this year. De-watering, we covered that. It's all going well. Early works, again, we're out to mining tenders. That's gone out to all the majors at the moment. There's some pretty strong interest on that front. Those numbers are due back shortly, and we'll be making a decision in the coming months. Offices, workshops, camp, all that work's in train, and it's going to start going in in September. To deliver all this, the key thing was to build a team, and that's one thing I'm quite proud of within this business. We do have an experienced team. We've all got a proven history at developing assets in one way or another.
We want to deliver a sustainable operation. This goes all the way from the board where myself, I mean, I came out of Westgold. I spent 11 and a half years there, a lot of time developing assets in that business. Over 14 years, I've been working through mines, building them, restructuring, refurbing mills, building teams. It's something I love to do. My team, my CFO, he's been there through financing projects, starting projects, running the whole life cycle. My GM of Operations, he's started multiple assets. My GM of Studies, he's been there, he's done the studies, he's worked through the permitting, and he knows what needs to be done.
My Exploration Manager, same thing, he's been there, he's found ore bodies, he's been a mine manager, he knows how to build teams, he knows how to make it happen, and that's going down through the next levels of business as well. We're building our skill set in, we're bringing the right people in to make sure we can deliver this on time and hopefully on budget. That leads into where we are today, our next steps. With the new MRE which has come out, 46,000 meters of extra drilling went into that, and we've been drilling since. It's a high confidence underground resource base. The mine plan is being optimized now. We expect it to be larger. The mill plan will probably be larger, and that's going to really lead into a better, more robust DFS. In terms of delivering on the DFS, met work. It's due pretty soon.
We'll get that out. Continue with the major works programs. Permitting and approvals, we'll keep going through that. Project financing, so we've got indicative term sheets already from the major banks. There's not too many project development financing packages going around right now, and this is a fairly large one. There is a strong appetite, well in excess of what we're looking for. Terms which are excellent. Not too many hooks and barbs. No debt, sorry, no hedging, and very competitive interest rates. We're fairly excited on that front. We are funded to deliver our early works, so we're funded to get the camp expansions, the office, the initial deep line work underway in the lead-up to the FID. Our DFS, again, June, November of this year. For us, it's all really exciting. I'm about to go a little bit of time.
I wasn't going to do it, but I have got a bit of a pun. We've spoken to you about Rox's Rocks. As a team, we're excited about what we're developing. If you want to know more about it, come see us at Booth 79. You can meet my Rock Stars or you and me can have a chat about it. Thank you.