Going to start here. I will be making a number of forward-looking statements today, and I guide you to this and to the statement here. Eskay Creek is a rare tier 1. It is going to have large-scale gold and silver production, about 450,000 equivalent ounces over the first five years. It is going to be one of the highest grade open-pit mines in the world. All of that translates into low operating costs in a great area of the world. Mining is very common there, very well known.
Construction is now majorly underway. We are approaching over 70%, approaching the 75% mark, and we do have growth opportunities at Eskay ahead of us. 2026 is really a year of execution for us. It really started in January, where we first signed an IBA agreement with the Tahltan First Nation in B.C., along with the Declaration Act Section 7 agreement there.
We got our environmental assessment certificate and our major Mines Act permits, we did that all before the end of the first week of February. We went on then to do a comprehensive refinancing package. I will get into that a little bit in the next few minutes. As well, what we have really been doing is a lot of de-risking. We did come up with a CapEx estimate for Eskay Creek redevelopment in the end of March. It is about 20% higher than what we had put out in the DFS, but still very much in line, about $659 million to do that. Some of the cost escalation there was partly inflation, some of it, and quite a bit of it, was water management, with some of the regulations in B.C. tightening up over the time that we did the engineering and the permitting.
Finally, a few design changes that were cognizant just to make the project a lot better. Eskay Creek is situated in the Golden Triangle in Northwest B.C. It is in an area of the world that is very well known for mineralization. Couple operating mines nearby, Red Chris and Brucejack, both Newmont assets. There are other really big development projects there as well. It has got excellent infrastructure. Paved highway to within 55 kilometers of Eskay Creek, and excellent gravel road all year round access into the site. One of the most important things, about 300 megawatts of power generation at about 17 kilometers away from Eskay Creek that ties into the BC Hydro grid. So great infrastructure.
If we take the now almost three-year-old DFS, apply updated current metal prices, we end up with about an NPV of around $5.5 billion, and a very quick payback on this asset. Through years 1 to 10, you can see based on that, very high cash flow generation from this asset. We will be coming out with a new update on this towards the end of January, update some of this, the free cash flow metrics, operating costs, et cetera. When we put out the DFS, we front-end loaded the production profile. So excellent production profile over the first five, six years, averaging about 450,000 gold equivalent ounces over that time. Then the grade started to drop off. But we knew that we had opportunities to bring that back up.
Five and a half grams per ton average over the first five years is one of the highest grade open-pit gold mines in the world. Excellent all-in sustaining costs. We will be updating those shortly. What we'll be doing though by the end of January is updating the technical report, bringing in really a couple main things, steepening the pit slopes to deepen the pit, and as well bringing in our SNIP asset as well, keeping it as a small underground mine, but bringing it into operation. We fully expect Eskay Creek to be able to show that it'll run at a run rate of about 400,000 ounces over 10 years' time. So a great asset and a great jurisdiction. This is the refinancing that we did, I guess it was really the first week of April.
This kind of points to Skeena and how we think about things, and we're not really looking for norms. This is about out-of-the-box thinking. We refinanced a package that we had done with Orion. It was a really good package, $350 million US senior secured loan and another $100 million cost overrun facility. As well, we used to pay back or buy back two-thirds of the stream, and we did this by issuing a $750 million US senior secured note. Was one of the first times that a pre-production company has been able to do this. It brought our cost of capital down from about 12% to about 8.5%. Was very well received in the market, and now we're starting to see others do the same. But was excellent thinking by Walter to get that done.
If we look at North American jurisdictions for gold production, we'll see that in the first five years, Eskay Creek will rank one of the biggest producers. Over the life, it's still very high, but again, we believe that average, we're going to go up as we continue to improve Eskay Creek and look at the growth opportunities there. If you look at the bottom line there, you'll see who most of these assets belong to. Most of the top ones always in the hands of I talked about the gold grade already. This just shows where we're at, about five and a half grams per ton over the first five years. As well, we've got 4.6 million gold equivalent ounces in reserve right now, about 80% of that is in the proven category. So we've got a very, very high confidence on that.
We do expect that to grow and grow fairly significantly over the next, say, call it four months. I mentioned we're in the middle of construction right now. It's progressing very well. I'm going to draw a line here. So we're right around here today. What do we have left is really now where we're at. Permanent power is almost up to site. So we'll tie into the lines, we'll energize in late November. Tailings dam, the small starter dams that we have will be done that in probably the next month and a half to two months. Mining's been ongoing for, really, we started it in 2024, got bigger and better last year in 2025, and now we're really putting in the pit mining practices, and I'll show you some pictures on that.
In the next week, we will start now taking ore out of the pit and stockpiling it. In terms of the production, the process plant, it is progressing nicely. Mechanical installation is almost complete. It is really about piping and electrical and instrumentation right now. The only mechanical we have left is the jaw crusher and the filter press to go, and that is really left. Camp is almost complete. This is the big thing here, though. Our first ore is expected in Q2 of this coming year. We are tracking very nicely towards that and very confident that we are going to achieve that.
This is what we have done basically on the project to date. Bulk earthworks mining, we started that. We are doing all our own mining and earthworks on the project. Advanced that nicely. I will show you some pictures. Wastewater management, again, we are building that out. We have put in a water treatment plant.
Phase 2 of that is going to come online in the next couple of months. Process plant is being done by Ausenco under an EPCM contract. It is going very well. High voltage is almost in place. Then, of course, the camp. This just quickly shows the site layout and what it looks like. The pit over in here. All the ore mining is starting up towards the top of the ore body, and it comes down a ridge. When we look at the processing plant, it is pretty straightforward. Jaw crusher followed by 3 stages of grinding. We then do a rougher float followed by a regrind, and following that regrind, a cleaner, and we produce a concentrate. Right now, we will only produce a concentrate from Eskay Creek and sell it to smelters and mostly begin with probably go to China.
Here are some pictures just to show you some of the progress for what we are making. This is the open pit that we have really started. In the foreground of the pit, this is what we have been mining, mostly to get clean NAG waste materials for building out the infrastructure like roads, coarse ore stockpile, and the tailings dam, the starter dam. Now our focus is really moving on the ore mining, and the more mining is up in this area here.
We are mining predominantly rhyolite over the next year. Starting to take that out in the next week, as I mentioned, and we will progress that. Want to have about 250,000 tons of ore on the stockpile prior to start-up. Crusher conveyor installation on the left, that MSE wall now is just about complete. You can see the steel work and some of the mechanical installation of the jaw crusher there.
On the right is the conveyor that goes from the crusher over up to the coarse ore stockpile. That conveyor is all in place now. Here is the before and after. On the left is the coarse ore stockpile reclaim area. On the right now, we have got it backfilled, and we are currently doing the ring concrete foundation for the dome installation, which is expected to start the frame installation this week. Mechanical installation of the plant going very, very well. Probably over 90% complete now. We have got sag mill in, ball mill in. We have got our two in blue there is our IsaMills. One is a tertiary mill, and then our concentrate regrind mill. On the right are flotation. That is our rougher flotation tank cells. This photo is the one that I like.
It shows the mill looking from the dryer and filter press over towards the north, and you can see there's not much room to put anything else in, so the mechanical installation here is progressing very nicely. Water treatment plant, phase 1 is done, and we're just about complete with phase 2. We've also got now the Volcano Creek Substation is complete and ready to tie in and energize the system. On that, we've got poles to within 2 kilometers of the site, and our lines are strung up to about 5 kilometers from the site. That'll be done over the next month, then towards the end of November, we'll energize in our final tie-ins. New employee camp that we're putting in is going to be state-of-the-art. Best in the area by far. Three-story facility. We've situated about 10 kilometers away from the mine.
It's in an area that gets about a third of the snow, but it'll be a great employee experience. In terms of what it looks like inside, very solid. Brand-new kitchen, dining facility. On the right, beds that are slightly bigger, its own washroom, which is huge when you go to recruit and for retention of personnel. We've put some money into this, but knowing there's a good reason for it. We're now really moving into the operational readiness phase. Part of that is the mining. The mining's been going on for a while. What we're really doing in the mining now is zeroing in on our selective ore mining techniques.
We've been mining fairly bulk waste before, but now some of the things we're putting into place, we'll use selective flitch mining with backhoe excavators, and then we'll use some technology to really help guide the excavator and the dig lines. People is a big focus right now. A lot of recruiting. We do have our GM in place. We've got mill manager in place, mine manager in place, maintenance people in place, chief Mets, and the like. We're finishing off our commissioning plan right now, and then we'll bring in some operators, and we'll split the commissioning between us and Ausenco to do that. The other thing we're doing is quite a bit of met testing ahead, so we're going to drill some samples, very much indicative of the first 12 months of ore that'll go through the plant.
To do that, just to help guide that ramp-up phase of the mill and have the operators know exactly what to expect. This is the Lassonde Curve, and of course, fairly well-known. We followed that pretty well to a T so far. We're sitting today at about a $4 billion U.S. market cap. We do see a lot of growth opportunity from here. We believe there's going to be some re-rates from here. I'll get into that in the next slide, but there's some good comps to look at here in terms of comparing our production profile, our free cash flow profile with what some of these other companies are doing and what their market caps are. I think it bodes well, and it really shows where we expect to be in the next six months to two years.
If you look at some of the other developers who are now in production and have looked at their re-rate over the time of development and getting into production, it bodes well for Skeena and what we're expecting over the next kind of period of time. Market caps, when you look at it and where we're at, and we've got this pathway to 500,000 ounces of production in 2028. We see the first re-rating going when we start commissioning, and we start putting ore through the mill. We see then another re-rating when we get proven that we can operate this mine and generate the free cash flow that we say it's going to. Really good shareholder support, really good coverage from the banks. Here's the list of our shareholders.
There's been a couple of them in the last couple years that have come in totally on the open market, and good supporters. I'll leave it there if there are any questions.
Thanks very much, Randy. We do have time for one question. John. Hey, Randy. John Tumazos.
Hey, John.
You had early experience at Kupol, which was a very high-grade deposit with a lot of free gold.
Yeah.
How would you compare Eskay Creek gold to Kupol? In terms of the geostatistics of the technical studies for Skeena, do you think the top cuts were liberal, loosey-goosey, too much area of influence? Are you building a beautiful grinding mill with the ore grade kind of fuzzy?
Yeah. So, interesting. First of all, Kupol, yeah, lots of free gold. Eskay Creek is the exact opposite. Eskay Creek has almost no free gold. We don't even put in a gravity circuit into it. It is all very super fine, and in fact, to get the full liberation, we have to grind down to 10 microns to get it. So it is a completely different beast. Now, when we go back and look at the production history of Eskay Creek, their reserve estimate grade over the life of the mine was underestimated always. So they would overproduce pretty well all the time. I liken this a lot actually to Fekola and Mali because at Fekola and Mali, we see extremely high grades as well. Overall, what we saw in Mali was that the higher grades, actually, we'd always get a bump up on the reconciliation, not a drop-down.
In the lower grade, we'd actually see it the opposite way. This is what historically has been at Eskay Creek as well. So no, I don't think there is any liberalism at all in any of the top cuts. This is a deposit that's been known for many years, and like I mentioned, production profile over the life, they always had underestimated the reserve grade and ounces on it and always overproduced on that.