Good morning. My name is Anas, I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Agnico Eagle and Kirkland Lake Gold joint conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question- and- answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, please press star then the number two. Thank you. Mr. Sean Boyd, Mr. Tony Makuch, you may begin your conference.
Thank you, operator, and thank you everyone for joining us this morning, where Tony and I are very happy to be here to talk about our merger of equals, which puts two of the best gold mining businesses together to create an outstanding high-quality senior gold producer. We'd like to take you through a series of slides today. In the presentation, there'll be forward-looking statements, so please read the cautionary language in the slide deck and then we've covered our legal requirements. We always do this. The lawyers always remind me to do this, and I made sure that I set that slide aside so we could cover that at the start here. Again, we're very pleased to be here.
What I'd like to do is just do a quick intro and cover some slides, and then Tony will address some of the key aspects in a bit more detail and talk about the people side. Again, we think this makes a lot of sense for all of our stakeholders as Tony will go through, not just the shareholders, but also our collective employees and also the communities in which we operate and we partner with, and our partners in those communities. This is all about making sure that we've created a business that continues to deliver at a high level for all these stakeholders. Just a view and how this got started, we've had a sense as you've heard us talk about it, that the industry will likely consolidate and consolidate over the next two years.
What we've been saying is what's critical to that is how this happens. How this consolidation happens will determine how successful the industry will be over the next 10- 20 years and how much value the industry will create. I think the industry has demonstrated a lot of discipline and a lot of focus over the last several years, and we think going through this consolidation phase that we will continue to see discipline from the industry. We have consistently said that if consolidation is to be successful, it has to focus on taking advantage of regional consolidation opportunities that drive significant synergies and that also results in the best assets ending up in the strongest hands and keeping the risk level low and the business high quality. We believe we have accomplished all of those goals with the announced merger this morning.
We're here to talk about the creation of the highest quality, lowest risk senior gold producer, in favorable jurisdictions. I think that you know Agnico in its 60+ year history, we haven't wanted to be everywhere in the world. We've chosen those regions where we could see tremendous mineral potential and an ability to do business. With this combination, we keep that favorable jurisdiction profile and that low political risk profile. This will also be the lowest cost, and the lowest risk growth. This will also continue to be driven by leadership in ESG and Tony and I will discuss some of that as we go forward. The risk level's important.
The industry is in a period right now where a lot of investors are indifferent about gold. Investors are looking for those high quality, low risk businesses that are generating significant free cash flow, and this does that. We'll talk about how that plays out as we go forward. One of the key things that drove us to continue to discuss possibilities, which started 2 - 3 years ago, was the potential for significant synergies by putting these two businesses together, particularly synergies in the Abitibi greenstone belts.
If you go from the Detour mine south to Kirkland Lake and across to Val d'Or, this company will combine the best assets, have the best cost structure, have the opportunity to drive even more synergies from those assets, not just from an operational standpoint, but also from a mine building standpoint when you think about the Upper Beaver Project in Kirkland Lake and some of the other growth projects that we have. The synergy number is CAD 2 billion over 10 years, and we actually think we can do better than that as we get into these assets in more detail.
That's what was driving the discussions, which we've talked off and on for the last two to three years, looking at what the synergies could be and how, by putting these companies together, we could realize on those synergies and put together the lowest risk, highest quality gold business. One of the keys that I think you've seen from both companies over the last year or so is the exploration value add. Whether it's the recent results coming out of Detour or Fosterville, or also with our exploration update in July where we talked about our ability to grow our mineral resource and grow our reserves at several of our producing assets, which is driving brownfield opportunities within this business.
This, although it will be a bigger producer, it still is very much an exploration story where exploration success at any one of these large producers can move the needle in terms of value creation, and Tony will talk a bit more about that in this presentation. In terms of balance sheet strength, this company is extremely strong and will have one of the best balance sheets in the industry. In fact, Agnico has an investment-grade credit rating, which we would expect there's a strong possibility that that credit rating can be upgraded on a successful completion of this transaction. What we've really done here is we've built, from a Canadian perspective, a Canadian mining champion that has a solid base of high-quality assets.
It has an experienced management team that has proven its ability to drive per share value over time, and it's a company that's well-positioned to take advantage of additional opportunities that present themselves at the right time with the right value proposition. That's why we're extremely excited about this transaction. I'll just briefly run through some of the key metrics and some of the focus, and then Tony will get to a discussion on the people, and how this all comes together in more detail. On page five, we see some of the key metrics compared to our peers. Whether it's all-in sustaining costs on a pro forma basis for 2021, being the best in the business, strong operating margins among our peers, production strength among the peers, ability to continue to grow that production, Tony will talk about that. As we said, reserves are important.
We've got a large reserve base, an extremely large combined resource base that we expect to see continued growth in reserves as we continue to focus on exploration. The two companies spend an awful lot on exploration. We'll redefine those programs as we move forward on this, but it's all designed for additional conversion of reserves from resource, but also to grow the overall resource envelope. We've seen that at Detour. We've seen that at Canadian Malartic. We see the ability to continue to do that at LaRonde and Meliadine. There's lots of opportunities within the portfolio. On page six, essentially what we're saying is the strategy that both companies have employed has worked. There's no need to change it.
It's like-minded, per share focused, a focus on low-risk assets, but focused on geological opportunity and focused on putting capital to work to realize on that geological opportunity. That's critical to the future of this company, and we've got some slides there that show the new Agnico's ability versus peers to create value over time, and that strategy will continue to be employed within the combined company. On ESG leadership, Agnico ranks very high in ESG, but I think on a couple of metrics which are a focus of generalists investors and all investors to this space are greenhouse gas emissions and water consumption. We rank very, on a relative basis, low in terms of those key metrics. Kirkland does as well, given the way their assets are powered in terms of hydropower.
We have an opportunity to continue to improve on an already strong position relative to our peers. Tony will get into, they do a lot of work on the Indigenous file, particularly in Ontario. We do a lot of work in Nunavut. We're leaders in that regard, and the strategies that both companies have are industry leading in terms of dealing with communities and Indigenous groups, and that will continue as we go forward. There's an opportunity as we combine to continue that ESG leadership over greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, and relationship with Indigenous communities. On page eight, we have the rankings. We both committed to be net zero by 2050. I think you've heard Agnico talk about initially at Hope Bay, we now have a memorandum of understanding to build the initial wind turbine there.
That's the first step in taking advantage of technology to lower the environmental impact that our operations have on the communities, and we'll be very focused on those opportunities and have the financial firepower to make additional investments in that capacity. In terms of management, before I turn it back over to Tony, in terms of management, I think that's one of the things we liked from the start is like-minded, similar strategies focused on per share value creation.
I think one of the opportunities we see, particularly on synergies, is given our longer history, being around for 60 years, and some of the levels of complexity of our mines at places like LaRonde, we have an ability to, and this is what's driving some of the synergies, apply some of the skills that we've developed being in business longer than our partner Kirkland Lake, and bringing those to bear in terms of advancements in innovation and in skills on the Kirkland Lake assets. This only strengthens our ability to grow the company, focus on that per share value creation. In some of the key positions that I'll serve as Executive Chair, focused on sort of strategy and culture, Tony will be the CEO, running the business, working with Ammar Al-Joundi as the President.
Ammar, many of you know, has been with Agnico for a number of years, prior to that with Barrick, has experience in the financial and operational side, and he'll be working closely with Tony to see that we meet our objectives and continue to focus on that per share value creation. Jeff Parr will be the Vice Chair. He's currently Chairman of Kirkland Lake. Jamie Sokalsky, who was the former CEO of Barrick and is on our board, will be the Lead Director. Lots of talent, lots of skills, lots of experience, lots of credibility among the board. We'll be shrinking the board to 13 members. Agnico will have seven, Kirkland Lake will have six, and we think that's a good size going forward, and is good corporate governance.
I'm happy to turn the rest of the presentation over to Tony, and at the end of that, we'd be happy to answer any questions that you have. Tony
Okay, thanks, Sean. Thanks everyone for being here. I'm on slide 10 in the deck. Maybe before I get too involved, I guess the big part of what we're working to accomplish. We put it in a quote in the press release. This is a merger that's being put together to create strength on strength, as we talked about. It's two companies. Nobody's trying to fix a problem here. We're trying to create a better company for our industry and to really create a lot of value for people and communities where we live, where we work. We need to make a difference in the regions we operate. This slide number 10 gives a sense. You might look and say it was 11 mines, there's four operating jurisdictions, there's a lot of really, really good people working here.
I've been to a lot of the mines. We got 11 mines. They're run by people in the area. The quality of the people, the quality of the asset is second to none. The standard of work is special. Like, as Sean mentioned, the culture and the cultural fit in terms of whether treating your own people, but the people in the communities where we work, it fits very well. There's a lot of respect for responsible mining. We're here to create a sustainable operations that'll be here for a long time. I think you'll get to see that in some parts in the slide deck. If I go to slide 11, we talk about that we combine two of the lowest risk businesses in the gold space in terms of making the new company or the new Agnico Eagle Mines.
Although Agnico, in its own right, has created a special brand over the years, and we can continue to build upon that and definitely demonstrate that it's continued leadership in the areas of that Agnico's been focused on, whether it's people, operational excellence, and really leading in terms of how we move forward, in terms of how we develop mines, how we come into regions. As I've mentioned before, when the Kirkland Lake Gold were, you got the chance to be a company that people want you to work. Communities want you to be there. Communities and countries want you to be there to develop the mines and to create value in those regions because we know how to do things and do things right and make a difference.
There's a couple things on this slide that I think really stands out. It's not just about the merger and creating this Canadian gold champion, because it does create a significant Canadian producer. You can see this slide in terms of production from Canada, where you can take all the next 10 companies combined, and they don't produce as much gold as the new Agnico Eagle will produce in Canada in a very low risk jurisdiction. The important part of that is not necessarily when we talk about low risk, it's also in regions where we understand the geology very, very well. We understand the people and how to work in these communities. We understand the climate, we understand the regulation, and we're part of it. I think the value creation that can come from that is, it's hard to quantify.
In slide number 11, we give a rundown in terms of synergies expecting CAD 2 billion of pre-tax synergies over the next 10 years, Sean made reference to this. This seems like a big number, but when I look at it, there's probably significant more opportunity that can be created, whether it's through operational synergies and just the meshing of ideas of people, being able to explore more aggressively, being able to develop and go more qualitatively in terms of what we try to do and really in terms of optimizing, taking advantage of technology. I think fundamentally, the strength of a balance sheet would be very important. Slide number 12 just breaks down when we talk about consolidation and there's been a lot of consolidation really between Kirkland Lake Gold and Agnico Eagle prior to us getting here.
If you look at the new Agnico Eagle going forward, if you go back to the last 5 years, you've got one company that was previously seven corporate offices, seven companies. It's been consolidation at the corporate level, consolidation of businesses, less head office, et cetera, that really focus on driving value for shareholders. When you look into the regions where we operate, and specifically on this slide, the Abitibi Greenstone Belts, that you can see where the mines are, the properties are, the mines are. We have the strategic locations with mills in these regions. As we talk about, just in the Abitibi alone, just between northeastern Ontario and northwestern Quebec, where you have the opportunity to produce 1.9 million ounces a year.
In this region, in northeastern Ontario, northwestern Quebec, mined and remaining ounces of gold produced over 250 million ounces, and I'd say there's still some significant exploration upside to find a lot more. Slide number 14 is showing sort of a rundown of some of the mines and the combination of mines in the various different regions. I did visit a lot of the mines. I've been to the mines at Amaruq and Meliadine up in Nunavut. We've been to Kitikmeot, been to Goldex. Seeing the operations and seeing how things work can see a lot of complementary skills and a lot of areas where there's skillsets and people.
One thing we don't really talk enough about here in terms of the synergies is just the synergies of the people and the skill of being able to take advantage of people's skills and that intellectual property in terms of even advancing Detour Lake faster and Macassa faster and even the ability to explore in different areas. You get to see the different deposits, say, within the Abitibi, the different deposits in northeastern Quebec and northeastern Ontario, what's being exploited, what's being discovered, what's being mined, and saying, "Geez, from an exploration point of view, those other deposits are in both regions. We just got to start looking for them." I think there's a lot of opportunity to grow value in the company, and we get pretty excited in terms of what can happen. I know that there's upside in life extension at Kittilä.
You can see Meliadine is definitely poised to be there for quite a long time. We know Macassa, what we're trying to build in terms of long life assets, same as Detour. You have here in the company a significant number of mines that are all 20+ year mine life that we have the ability to even grow further than that. Slide number 15 gives some breakdown a little bit in terms of where we see some optimizations, whether it's, and again, without getting too much into it, in terms of asset improvements, and I talked about the cross-pollination of best practices, but taking advantage of people and intellectual property as well as being able to leverage things like technology, bringing smart mindset to the operations, taking advantage of development capabilities within the companies and our exploration strength.
We have the opportunity for, as we talk about smart growth, and one really key, whether we want to call it a synergy or business opportunity, is Kirkland Lake itself. This will have a significant benefit to the Kirkland Lake region with the potential to grow using the existing assets and asset base, operational base between the Holt mill and the Macassa operations in Kirkland Lake and combine that with Agnico Eagle's operations and deposits in the region. We can build definitely a whole other production center in Kirkland Lake. Then, we talk about that technology acceleration, and really that's, in terms of moving forward, there's a lot of exciting things and there's a lot of value that's going to be created through, first off, bringing the platforms in to be able to automate the operations better, to digitize, get more involved in equipment.
One of the things we're really seeing within Agnico Eagle and the operations is the overall machine learning, the AI that's being adopted and being able to leverage that in terms of what we can do in building.
We talk about building smart mines and being able to really make the mines a better place to work. It ties into a lot of our ESG initiatives, a better place to work for people, a better place for shareholders to invest in because not only are you going to see improved returns on that from people, but also from a responsible and creating a social license for long-term, be more responsible to meeting initiatives, whether we talk about greenhouse gas initiatives or water management, but also in terms of social license and how we can really leverage this to help the people in the regions where we work and where we are to improve their lifestyle.
Slide number 15 gives some sense on some of the growth. We have significant growth just over the next 2 years in terms of what's happening where you can see some of the areas within. We know the growth, or we've talked about the growth within Kirkland Lake at Detour and Macassa number four shaft once it's completed. There's significant growth coming out of the Agnico assets, mainly Canadian Malartic, as well as Meliadine and Kittilä. In terms of growth, it's not just about growing production at the expense of margin. You can see, and you'll see it in this business, that we can continue to improve margin because of the investment into the operations, being able to continue to lower costs as a business.
Fundamentally, it's about how do we improve the return on the business side and put the investment in to invest in growth and growth in the business, which gives growth in shareholder value either through share appreciation and talk a little bit more about the shareholder returns. Slide number 16 gives a general outline of some of the list of operations, give a sense of the organic growth, and you can see there's organic growth within each of the operating mines. As well, there's a significant pipeline of projects that can be developed. In terms of scale, you get the sense that this company can not only demonstrate 10-20 years of production sustainability and production growth and with new operations, even demonstrate that beyond 2040, we still be around, and not just at the expense of cost, not at the expense of return for shareholders.
The slide number 16 is showing the operating margin. Definitely operating margin, a lot of it is driven by gold price. We recognize in our industry that we're price takers, we're not price makers. If we, by the combination of the company, we focus on, and we talk about the synergies and the new value creation, we focus on what we can control in terms of our costs, bringing our costs down in the business, and being able to invest in new value in the business. Grow production at higher margins is where we go. We see ourselves being able to take this company somewhere around, cash costs of CAD 700 an ounce, all-in sustaining costs somewhere around CAD 900 an ounce. With synergies, being able to pull that down CAD 50-CAD 60 an ounce.
On that, combined with further investment and potentially new growth and new discoveries or new initiatives that can be implemented over the next year or two, as we unlock the people and really take the ideas we have here and put them out there, not just to the 200 people, about 50 or 100 people in the corporate group, but down into the 5,000 or 10,000 people within the company, the value that we can create will be special. Sean talked about a few areas where it's important from how we create value in our industry, and definitely operational excellence and that we talk about operating costs and how cost and margin are important in our industry.
Having the operating margin is important because then we can invest back into the business, both in terms of investing in sustaining CapEx, growth CapEx, and investing in exploration. Slide number 18 is really giving a sense, or, sorry, number 19, giving a sense on where, what's been the track record in terms of growing reserves and resources and the combined company of Kirkland Lake and Agnico Eagle, the new Agnico Eagle, is really the only major gold company that has grown reserves over the last 10 years. We have a strong commitment to exploration. We're not going to lose that commitment to exploration, understand that that's a key part of driving value.
I can say that after reviewing and looking at the assets within Agnico Eagle, whether you're in Finland, whether in Mexico, whether in Nunavut and in the Abitibi, and that combines with the excitement and the exploration upside at the Kirkland Lake assets, you can see that there's significant ability to continue to replace reserves and even grow reserves and resources and new discoveries over the next few years. In terms of where we drive shareholder value, the first one, the first slide previously where we talked about margin and operational excellence in terms of margin, that's number one. Definitely that grows value for shareholders. Second part, as we talked about, is in terms of investing in exploration, which combined supports longer life for assets and which supports also growth in production, which again creates value for shareholders.
Then the slide nine, sorry, slide 20, where is the other aspect where we've been focused on and really you got two companies that have had a similar value proposition in terms of providing return to shareholders through, in terms of Agnico, through a strong dividend and a growing dividend that's been growing year-over-year. In Kirkland Lake, we have introduced a dividend, and then growing dividend and combine that with our NCIB, an industry leader in terms of shareholder return since 2020. I think a fundamental part, slide 21, gives a sense on the balance sheet. This is important because I think it's important for shareholders to understand, and again, and in the track record of both companies, we've been growing value of the company, growing value in net per share set there, but we haven't been issuing shares.
Fundamentally, the focus has worked within to finance the company, to finance the growth of the company, to finance the return to shareholders through operational performance through the business. We have a strong balance sheet, so you get a sense with the strong balance sheet, the company has no financial weakness in terms of being able to move forward, both in the current plan and the current growth plan, but also to execute new strategy as we move forward. I think that's important for shareholders because we're not here to dilute shareholders. We're not here to just create a lifestyle for ourselves. I think I've seen that definite fit within Kirkland Lake and Agnico Eagle in terms of where management and the people in the company are all here to create value for going forward and value for all stakeholders, and including the shareholders.
Slide number 22 just summarizes a little bit of the structure of the transaction. I think Sean mostly went through some parts of it. I'm not going to spend a lot of details on it. I think a couple of main points is, yeah, we are merging the companies together to create a stronger company and a company, Agnico Eagle Mines. I think Agnico Eagle has always been a brand that's been well built up over the years and a company that definitely has a strong track record of value creation over the last 25 or actually 60 years. I think this only complements that give the ability to continue that. I've said in the past that in terms of trying to build Kirkland Lake Gold or build companies of my own self, you always aspire to try to build a company like Agnico Eagle.
I think we're proud to have the opportunity to be part of Agnico Eagle in terms of what we can do going forward. We are going to be the complementary management from both sides, taking strength of management on both sides, really leveraging that in terms of what you can do for value creation. There is a merging of the boards. Sean mentioned about what's going to happen at the board level. Won't go ahead in much detail, but I think the biggest thing is you're going to have a strong merged company together that can really take the combined strengths of both without changing the culture, without changing the ethics, the morals, and how the company move forward in terms of creating value for shareholders. The last slide in the deck here, slide 23.
Just to summarize here, maybe I'll just say, this is a merger that creates the newest and what we feel is the highest quality senior gold producer. It's a merger, and we can talk about it's a defining moment in the gold space and definitely in the Canadian gold space. Forget about the fact that we're gold mining companies. I think this is a merger that in any aspect, in any industry, within any region in the world, but within Canada, I think it's the right kind of thing to be doing. It's how you take strong companies and put strong companies together and create an even stronger company.
I think, as much as we might sit there and give you a sense on what we can do from synergies and opportunities and capital returns and how we can make a difference on social license and ESG in terms of transforming the industry going forward, I think as much as we can talk to you about and give you a sense in these next few days, I think over the next 6 months or a year or two, you're going to see even more excitement happening, again, as we take advantage of the 10,000 plus people within the company and what they can do and what they can bring to the table. With that, just thanks. I don't know, Sean, if we can turn it over to questions.
Yeah. Thank you, Tony. Operator, just before we get to questions, I'll just add a couple of points, and that's that both companies do not have to do this. I think both companies sort of worked hard over the last two years to understand whether this was the right thing to do for all the stakeholders, and determined that the strategic rationale made sense in terms of creating the lowest risk, highest quality senior gold company. That made excellent sense. The industrial logic was there, on the synergy side, with us looking at about CAD 2 billion in synergies over the next 10 years. As Tony said, we believe we can do better than that as we get into the operations in more detail and in more depth. I think that will be important, and that's what really we believe shareholders are looking for.
They're looking for the industry to combine in a way that unlocks value, that adds value for shareholders, that adds long-term value, that creates the platforms that, as Tony said, will be here for decades. We believe that this has done that when you look at the exploration upside, the brownfield opportunities, the project pipeline that's available, and the ability to invest in the future of this business in a way that still drives significant net free cash flow so that we can improve the returns to our shareholders. Essentially, that's what this is all about. We've listened to shareholders, we've listened to people that invest in this business, on what works and what doesn't work and what they're looking for.
We've had the opportunity, although it's been early, to hear from some shareholders this morning, and the response has been extremely positive because they've touched on all the points that we've just touched on in terms of what they're looking for in consolidation. One of the big shareholders in both companies, Joseph Foster at VanEck, is essentially saying that these are the types of deals that the industry needs to see. As we said at the start, we believe that the industry will consolidate. I think we're hopeful that the industry will consolidate in a smart way that unlocks value, that doesn't destroy value, and that creates an industry where investors will not only want to own these high quality companies, but they'll be compelled to own them.
We certainly think from a Canadian standpoint, when we look at the Canadian market, this is going to be a very sizable company, a dominant Canadian miner that has all the skills, all the experience, the high quality assets, the financial firepower, and the strategy that's created per share value that's going to succeed for many years. That's the reason why we're very excited about this. With that, operator, we'd be happy to open up the lines and take questions.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question- and- answer session. Should you have any questions, please press star followed by one on your touch-tone phone. You will hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request and your questions will be pulled in the order they are received. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by two. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift your handset before pressing any keys. One moment for your first question. Your first question comes from Josh Wolfson with RBC. Josh, please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning. I guess I have two questions. Tony, first, for Kirkland shareholders, I would question why do this transaction now? The company is really starting to hit its stride at Detour, and arguably the opportunity set hasn't been fully outlined, plus there's upcoming opportunities at Macassa and Fosterville, and arguably, a merger of this size really dilutes this growth opportunity for your shareholders. Sean, historically the company has really shied away from large scale M&A and has talked about a lot of the challenges of becoming a much larger gold company. How does this offset that risk?
Okay. Maybe, Josh, I'll start off. Yeah, you're right. Within Kirkland Lake, we have some significant value creation still coming through what we're working on at Detour and the optimization at Detour and value creation there. We're very excited about the exploration upside at the mine, and I've said before, even though as large as the resource is, we probably still haven't found the ore body there. That as well as Macassa and with the shaft is progressing well, should be completed some time over the next month and a bit in terms of directly sinking, and then we're definitely on track to complete the changeover of the shaft and get it back into production facility before the end of 2022. Lots of excitement there.
When you look at the growth opportunities, you combine that with the growth opportunities that we see in Agnico operations, whether it's what's happening at Malartic, whether it's what's happening and the value and the potential in the LaRonde area of northwestern Quebec, what we see at Kittilä, what we see up in Nunavut, we think that's a pretty good trade because there's lots of value there too, that will be unlocked. We think that the combination helps to unlock the value. There's an equal trade in terms of value creation, and then the big part of it when we talk about the synergies, and the synergies going forward, that unlocks new value as well as the people.
The people and the technology and being able to leverage some technologies sooner, really in terms of creating value at Macassa, that we talk about this for Kirkland Lake shareholders, or the value at Detour, it helps us to move those things forward a lot faster. We see this as a big plus and, maybe as somebody once I mentioned, we're trading basically 54% of the upside within Kirkland Lake Gold for 46% of the upside within the Agnico operations, and we think that definitely is a big value enhancing proposition.
Josh, on our side, and this goes for Kirkland as well, this only works in this form. These don't happen often. These aren't easy to do. They only work if there's upside on both sides, and both sides realize and understand the scope and scale of that opportunity, and I think that was evident to both companies as we worked our way through the collection of assets. As far as sort of not our style and, Agnico focus on size, I think we've always said this was more about number of mines in terms of manageability and location of those mines in terms of manageability rather than an overall ounce number. In this instance, as we've said, we haven't increased the risk profile of this business. We've actually put two low risk businesses together and essentially 12 mines in basically four countries.
To us, that's very manageable. If this was going to create a company that was just bigger for bigness sake and was spread out over many jurisdictions around the world and created a management issue or a manageability issue, then we clearly would not have done it. I think the other thing that attracted us to continue to look at this was the potential for those synergies. We would go back to what we said at the start, is that if the industry consolidates where one of the key drivers is taking advantage of regional opportunities, those regional opportunities driving significant synergies and driving an ability to optimize assets, then the industry will successfully evolve over the next couple of years. This was one that was regionally driven.
This was one where it was evident as we looked at the assets, where skill sets could be applied to opportunities within the combined company. That was evident as well. That's what helps drive the synergies and the ability to continue to optimize the assets. I would say the other reason that we both see is the exploration potential, and that's something we touched on at the beginning. That was certainly hit home as we look at the potential to grow deposits and the potential to have extremely long life assets. The potential to have those long life assets in good parts of the world where you can actually do business. It's the overall platform that creates the ability to sustain the business and do it in a way where it's self-funding and do it in a way where you can lead in ESG.
There's a number of components here that make sense. For us, it was, we're not going to grow and as a result of that, increase the risk level or dilute the quality of the underlying business. In this case, there was an opportunity to do it and put them together without a premium and do it in a way where we generate significant synergies and leave ourselves open for creating additional per share value through the exploration potential that exists. We've always been a company that's been driven by geological upside and geological opportunity. We've moved to areas where that geological potential and geological opportunity exists and where we bring skills to the table to help realize on that potential.
We see a lot of potential in the Kirkland Lake assets as we do on our own, to continue to add high quality, low risk ounces to a bigger and stronger platform in parts of the world where you can clearly get mining done and do high quality business.
Thanks. I'm conscious of the time here. Maybe if I can just ask one more follow-up question, Sean. When you think about the new jurisdiction of Australia, for Agnico, which has not been historically identified as a region of interest, how do you see managing a jurisdiction that's that far away? With a presence there, would you consider building out more opportunities there?
Well, again, a pro-mining country with a pro-mining culture, with great geological upside. Physically distant from where our home base has traditionally been, but it comes with a management team that has proven an ability to create a lot of per-share value. We had our people go to the site. We have an understanding of Australia, a better understanding of Australia, and the ability to do business there. Good asset with upside, with a solid management team, and it's up to them to lay out a strategy of how they're going to expand and build upon that expertise, that asset, and that business. There's more work and understanding to do there, but we're impressed with what we saw there.
Yeah. Josh, we had that question when we first merged with Kirkland Lake with Newmarket Gold back in 2016. In the end, the main part, a lot similar to what Sean said, it's good geology, good mining jurisdiction. When you look at what's going on, the skill set of the people is a very high standard. We actually learn and become better miners in terms of what we do because of what we learn there. Definitely, the geological potential is exceptional in that region in Australia and in a lot of other parts of the country. It's a going concern business that basically has lots of value creation and easy to manage.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Ovais Habib with Scotiabank. Habib, please go ahead.
Thanks, operator. Good morning, Sean and Tony. Tony, Kirkland Lake has really kept us on our toes since the Denver Gold Show. Just on the question side, Josh touched upon the merits of the deal for Kirkland Lake shareholders, so thanks for answering that question. Just a couple of questions from me. In terms of this merger, maybe this question is for Tony, and maybe Sean, you can add upon this as well. Does this merger change how you are looking to expand Detour and how aggressive you are moving on the exploration side at Fosterville? What I'm trying to understand is, would you look to slow things down, or are you, with the combined company, looking to continue to advance these projects according to current plans?
I would say, it's not going to slow you down at all. I think it gives us the opportunity to continue to grow. We're not going to slow anywhere, right? I think we're going to hit the ground running. It gives the opportunity for new potential. One of the things that I do see at Detour and one of the synergies that we, when you talk about sharing of technology, is to look at the application at Detour as we go west and what's going on at that operation, whether we continue to extend a larger pit or whether we combine what's going on there with what we see over at Odyssey and what we see over at Goldex, and we combine an underground operation with an open-pit operation at Detour. It has significant upside.
The resource at Detour, even in the current main pit, it bottoms out on 100 m+ thickness of indicated resource. It gives us the opportunity and taking advantage of what you see there to look at that now from a different approach and how we're going to mine it. I think there's lots of excitement there. In terms of we're not going to slow down what we're doing there. We're going to be able to think things a little bit more creatively. Similarly with Fosterville. Fosterville, the exploration upside is special at Fosterville.
It's one of the lowest cost mines in the world and most profitable mines in the world, and it's special in terms of what's there, and I think it's going to continue to be a core area for the company as we go forward, and really being able to leverage further opportunity in that region.
Just one area on our side would certainly be the Kirkland Lake camp. We've been moving our Upper Beaver project forward. More recently, we've had some of the best drill holes that we've seen on that deposit with significant gold grades and significant copper grades. That's a buildable project, low-cost producer. It'll certainly benefit from the proximity of Macassa and possibly Holt and its processing operation. This is part of the reason, and that's a good example of why this combination makes sense.
We have a shaft crew that's completing the Macassa number four shaft. We still have the work to do, that can be a crew that helped to develop Upper Beaver. We have a ramp at surface at Macassa, developing into the near-surface mineralization. It's a couple 100 m away from some resources that's on the Agnico ground. In terms of true synergies and true value opportunity in Kirkland Lake, both of those get unlocked because of that, and it helps us to keep the people that we want, the people there, and keep them interested in new opportunities. As Sean said, it leverages, we have the Holt mill, which we currently have kept in care and maintenance. We're maintaining the tailings area and setting it up. It really, again, for being able to advance those projects in Kirkland Lake, it reduces capital.
It helps you to move it forward in a lot quicker fashion, really understand, how do you permit them? How do you take it from concept to reality? I think that there's lots of opportunity in Kirkland Lake alone for that. I think that's one of the most exciting things, just for Kirkland Lake itself, this is going to be a big plus in terms of boosting that area and the economy for people in the region of Kirkland Lake.
Thanks for that, Tony and Sean. Just one more quick question from me on, just in terms of consolidation in the current consolidation environment we're in. In terms of the combination, obviously you're going to have a very large presence in Canada. You've taken a toehold position, obviously, with Fosterville in Australia. Do you feel that there's further consolidation that's needed in Canada as well as Australia?
Well, first off, in terms of, you're talking about me commenting about the other companies and what's going on, or are you talking about within us as we go forward? Definitely, when I look in the region, even within the Abitibi, but in a lot of the regions, definitely, you can see there's been some consolidation in Australia with Northern Star and Saracen in creating a solid gold company that can operate within those regions. Yeah, there's opportunity for further consolidation in the different regions, and it's all about being able to create companies that have stronger balance sheets, being able to not get sort of caught up in small changes in the market or what's happening in the regulatory environment, be able to move things forward responsibly and correctly for shareholders. I think there is opportunity for further consolidation in the regions.
There's been a history of consolidation. With Kirkland Lake Gold itself, getting to here, and now going to be part of Agnico Eagle, we've been a part of consolidation right from square one. There's been consolidation with Agnico Eagle prior to this. I can see that there's lots of opportunity going forward as time progresses with other companies, right?
That's perfect. That's it for me, guys. Really appreciate it. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Fahad Tariq with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. I wanted to ask, given the Canadian concentration, are there any regulatory risks or potential for having to even dispose of, and sell maybe Canadian mines to get this deal done?
No. No, there's not. No. In fact, that's the opposite. It's a strength of the business, and I think when we look at, unfortunately, how the Canadian space has lost some of their former champions due to international consolidation, this certainly helps to fill that void and vacuum and demonstrate leadership. I think it actually helps our ability to do business in this country along the major geological belts, and that gives us staying power over time.
Actually, that's one of the things, I think, that defines this merger as something different, and there's no one asset within the companies that needs to be disposed of. There's no non-core asset, right? It's all just strength on strength, right? As we talk about. We don't have to do anything to fix balance sheets or fix operations as such. We're going to be able to make things better, right, as we go forward.
Okay, great. Just one other follow-up question. One of the things that wasn't really touched on, Sean, maybe from Agnico's perspective is the additional firepower and balance sheet that comes with this deal. Maybe talk about, was that something that factored into this decision, and will that help with some of the CapEx needs in the, call it, next five years or so?
It was really driven by the synergies and the low-risk nature of the business and the ability to continue to grow. I think both companies have made a major investment and push in exploration. That will continue. When you combine the project pipeline, it's robust. There'll have to be some decisions made on where the emphasis is. Certainly, it's always nice to have additional firepower, particularly when you are blessed with a high-quality pipeline of not only individual projects, but also brownfield opportunities at some of our major cash flow generators. That's something that the company will have to work through, and focus on its capital allocation opportunities. I think this is really driven by ensuring that the next 10-20 years of this combined company is one of success in creating value, as we said, for all stakeholders.
A balance sheet is a key part of that, but that wasn't the primary driver here.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Tyler Langton with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just on the synergies of the CAD 240 million from strategic optimizations. I know you mentioned the Holt mill, but could I just provide a little
I think we lost him.
Yeah.
It appears we lost Mr. Langton. Your next question comes from John Tumazos. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Congratulations on the transaction. It's a great deal, great for both companies. To Tony, your shares didn't have a big boom on the September 2nd, 10 million ounce new resource statement at Detour. Why do this now when your stock wasn't recognizing those successes? Did you have unwanted approaches from other large companies that have a gazillion mines on a gazillion continents in a gazillion time zones and some bad countries that you just didn't want to merge with, and this is the logical transaction that made sense, and you did it?
Well, first and foremost, we've been working, as Sean mentioned, for the last few years, looking at this as being something that's definitely a way to transform the industry and really creating a leading gold company. This has been on our minds for quite some time and something that we've really seen as the best thing to do for the industry. In terms of Detour, we're going through, we're doing our mid-year updates and these, because we have been talking to shareholders and expressing that by year-end, we're going to have an updated resource estimate and then an updated reserve coming into 2022 and a new mine plan or an updated review on Detour in 2022. When we were going through that and we've seen the mid-year update in terms of what the resource looks like, we said, "Geez, that's material.
We better get that to shareholders." You could look at it and say, "Geez, when's the last time in your career that somebody has discovered a 10-million-ounce deposit within an existing mine?" So it's special. We recognize the benefit of that and what Detour brings to the table. Again, the same logic is I see significant upside in terms of the Agnico assets, and we see significant upside combined in terms of putting the companies together and the synergies you're going to create that will unlock that value and earlier for the Kirkland Lake shareholders and that the combined company is going to create more value for shareholders on its own, as opposed to each company individually or Kirkland individually on its own. It gives you that opportunity to move forward. In terms of interlopers and stuff, it's a small industry.
We do have good relationships with others and you do have conversations, et cetera, from time to time, but we really had no other intriguing opportunity available to us, and we felt that this was really the special, the one difference that, again, can make a difference in our industry and in the Canadian market, and, sorry, the industry as a whole, in terms of what we can do from defining the gold companies going forward. It was something that was pretty special.
Congratulations. I'll vote all my few shares for both companies and for it. Congratulations, Sean and Tony. Thank you.
Thank you, John.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Greg Barnes with TD. Please go ahead.
I think I'm going to sort of repeat John's question, though. Tony, I appreciate this started off as a strategic discussion between you and Agnico. Did it effectively turn into a sales process by the end?
No, we were never trying to sell Kirkland Lake Gold. We were trying to be part of building a better company. Regardless of that, if we talk to others, it's only because we're in this and making sure that we represent shareholders well in terms of what we're going to do, but this from our perspective, first off, is really the only thing available and at the other side is the best alternative. Kirkland Lake Gold was never for sale, per se. We were never selling the company, and we don't see this as being a sale. We see this as being a merger to create a new and a stronger company.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Scott MacDonald with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, guys, Congratulations on the deal. To Tony and Sean, following up on the topic of geography and manageability, thinking about Finland and the Mexico operations. Obviously, these mines are on the smaller side in the context of the combined company. Do you see these as regions that you'll continue to grow in and invest in or stick with the status quo or something you could divest, or how are you thinking about those two?
Yeah, I think in the case of Finland, that's one that's still growing. We just completed an expansion to get to 2 million tons a year, have the ability to take that up 15% or so. That's one of the largest reserve resources in the combined company. That's one of these long life assets that's going to generate strong returns for a number of years, and it's in a great part of the world. It's a pro-mining region, and there's lots of exploration excitement in and around where our Kittilä mine is based. I think it's strategic as well as a core holding for us as we look at it. In Mexico, it's been one of the key drivers of our cash generation ever since it went into production. Strategically, as we've always said, the number one asset we have there is the people
The ability to do business. We're always looking for opportunities to grow that business. It's tougher. There's still opportunity, we think, to leverage off of the skill set and build it into a bigger business. That team deserves more time, in our view, to lay out a plan. We do have opportunities now that we're still working. Santa Gertrudis has had, recently, some good drill results. There's still opportunity there. It is, from a strategic focus standpoint, an area where we have capacity. We have capacity to do more, so we'll certainly be looking at ways that that business can continue to grow and prosper, and deliver the cash generation and cash returns that it's done historically.
Right. In Mexico, I guess in terms of your expertise, historically, it's sort of been a smallish heap leach open pit operations. Is that the main type of opportunities you would consider, or looking at bigger types of operations as well?
Well, Pinos Altos has started as an open pit, but it's an underground mine.
Right
There's lots of skill sets there that we have in Mexico. The team there has actually worked for other mine developers and operators in Mexico. There's a broad range of skills. We can do more than just build small open pits there. We can build underground mines, sizable underground mines. We can build large open pits. It's a broad range of skills. It's not confined because of lack of skills. The discussions about opportunities can be much broader. As everybody knows that works in Mexico, it's a great place to work, a great place to do business. We don't have the size of the opportunities that we'd have, let's say, in the northern parts of our business.
It's still an area where you can find opportunities with lower CapEx and quicker paybacks and higher returns, and we have the skills to manage those as we continue to look for opportunities there.
Okay, great. Thank you. Maybe just talking about synergy. Could you provide a bit more detail on where you see the value in terms of the operational synergies? I presume mostly in the Abitibi, Kirkland area, maybe just a bit more on the specifics on how you could achieve the numbers you've laid out on the operational synergies.
First off, they're definitely leveraging some scale and operational synergies in terms of procurement and regional, in terms of people and how you're moving people around and what's happening there. Big synergy, as we talked about, is developing the assets in Kirkland Lake. The big synergy in terms of leveraging technology. In our last press release, we talked about Detour and saying as we see anywhere from CAD 750 million-CAD 1 billion of value creation at Detour, through advancements of improve operating costs and again, that will get unlocked through technology and changing some approaches to how we mine there. This gives us the ability to do that a lot faster. Instead of saying if it's going to be done in 3- 5 years, we got the opportunity to do it a lot quicker. We did partner with Rogers.
We're building a private area network at site, that should be operational in Q4 this year. We start putting instrumentation on our equipment. Start really getting a lot more digitization or automation. Even just being able to gather more data from the operations in terms of what gets done and combine that with, there's a lot of that technology that Agnico is actually much further ahead on that we can, instead of saying we're going to do it, as I mentioned, in three to five years, we're able to implement it a lot quicker. We can actually start collecting the data and work on how you're going to use the data to interpret what's going on. We are actually able to take advantage of that much quicker in terms of approach.
They've had a history of Malartic and mining at Malartic pit, and I think that in terms of benchmarking and give a better sense in terms of productivity and utilization of equipment, I think will definitely help up at Detour. I think there's some skill sets that come from Kirkland Lake, whether it's shaft sinking and development that definitely could help at, say, places like Kittilä, et cetera. We see the operational improvements and being able to reduce costs, improve procurement and just in terms of logistics and turnover of people, being able to keep people. There's been a lot of turnover of people that we see, and this should help in terms of reducing those costs and giving more opportunity to those people. Is that a good answer or is that too long-winded?
No, that's exactly. I was looking for details. Thank you very much. That's it for me. Congrats again, guys.
Thank you. Any more questions, operator?
Thank you. Your next question comes from Mike Parkin with National Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Most of my questions have been answered, congrats. It's nice to see a Canadian mining champion emerging. One additional question, just with relation to where do you see in terms of the upside with your First Nation relationships? You obviously have very strong relationships on both sides. Are they aware ahead of time of this merger? Are they supportive? They're looking at two very strong partners coming together and it being good for them on a go-forward basis. If you could provide any color on that.
I think that in terms of relationships and respect in terms of the local indigenous communities in the regions where we operate, I think there's a lot of similarities that you see, and we can leverage a lot more because now you're working with a lot larger groups of people. The approach and what we do, the people can get a sense on, you're definitely going to build a lot more trust because people can understand, there's a demonstrated track record of how we operate and how we treat people. I think that's consistency that can come across the border and across everywhere and not just in what we're doing in Canada. I think it makes a difference for what you're doing in Mexico and Finland and down in Australia with the Dja Dja Wurrung.
They get a sense on who we are and how we operate. I think that's going to just build more strength and trust with those groups. We have a good relationship, and we intend to continue to have a good relationship with them because it's a relationship built on respect, built on recognition, and recognizing that it's a partnership, right?
Yeah, I just would add to that in the Kirkland Lake camp, with the Upper Beaver Project, we're essentially dealing, and partnering with the same indigenous groups that are with Macassa. Certainly having that already strong relationship in place will be helpful as we collectively think about the opportunities that exist on our current land holdings in the Kirkland Lake camp, predominantly Upper Beaver, and then ultimately possibly Upper Canada. There's certainly some synergies there.
Great. Thanks very much, guys.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. Mr. Boyd, Mr. Makuch, you may proceed.
Thank you, operator. Tony and I would like to thank everybody for their attention today, their questions, on what we're very excited about, putting two high quality, low risk businesses together to create a stronger business, focused really on optimization, CAD 2 billion in synergies over 10 years. We think we can do better than that as we get into the assets in more detail. I'd like to thank the shareholders we've been able to talk to up till now for their support of the deal. We did mention Joe Foster, who's a big shareholder of both companies being very supportive of the transaction. I'd like to thank Joe. We've got a number of calls set up, as we move forward. We're trying to cover as much ground as we can.
We are available as the broader team as well to help you out if Tony and I don't get to you right away, as these meetings get set up. We're here to answer questions. We're working for all of you as shareholders in putting this business together. We're happy to talk about it at any time. Feel free to reach out to us. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask, could you please disconnect your lines?