What is the most important message I can give you? If I have got 10 minutes up here, there is really only one thing I want to focus on that matters to you, our owners, and that is how are we going to make you money over the next 10 years like we have in the past. It is really about, if you take a look at this picture, look at the box on the right at the top and focus on gold production per share. That is going to be the theme of my discussion today. Barrick, it is nice to see. I just want to make a quick call-out to Mark. I have worked with Mark for a long time. He is a great guy, and congratulations, Mark, on the new position. I wanted to make sure I said that. Agnico, we have been around for 70 years.
Our strategy is a little bit different than most of our peers. Our strategy really is to focus on regions that have the geologic potential for multiple mines over multiple decades and the political stability to allow us to operate multiple mines over multiple decades. This strategy gives us advantages operationally. We know all of our suppliers, we know all the contractors. We have somewhere between 1/2 and 1/3 the turnover rate of our peers. We are the number one customer for our suppliers. We produce more gold in Canada than the next eight companies combined. It does not give us just an operational advantage, it gives me and our team a capital allocation advantage. When my team comes and says they want to build a second shaft at Malartic and they give me a price, it is the same team that just built the first shaft at Malartic.
When we build a water treatment plant at Upper Beaver, it is the exact same water treatment plant that we have built a dozen times for a number of our mines. Does this strategy work? If you take a look at the bottom right chart, it does work. Our compounded annual return over the last 20 years is 13.5%, double the industry average. How have we achieved it? Remember, I said the key I am going to focus on is how are we going to make you money, and by definition, that is money per share. If you take a look at the chart right above it, from 2005 to 2025, and we all talk about growth, we have grown from 240,000 oz a year to 3.5 million oz a year, a factor of 14. That is pretty good, but honestly, you do not care.
We do not get paid to increase production. We get paid to make you money per share, and one of the ways we do it, and the reason we have had double the return of our peer group over the last 20 years, is the line right below it. We have increased production per share by a factor of three. That is hard to do. It is not hard for me to issue shares to buy a company and say I have grown production. What is hard is to be able to grow production per share. That is discipline. That production per share, when you add it to the increase in gold price, our earnings per share are up almost by a factor of 20, and our dividends, which by the way we have been paying for 43 years, are up by a factor of 50.
The theme today is going to be continuing production per share that we have delivered over the last 20 years. What I am really proud of is that we are going to continue to grow production per share over the next decade. I am going to show you explicitly which projects are going to do it. What I want to do is show you pictures to demonstrate that these projects are actually happening now, and they are going into production starting in 2030. These four projects alone, and there are others, are going to add about 1.5 million oz of additional production. 1.5 million oz of additional production, and at these gold prices, that is going to be additional production per share. A big mine is 500,000 oz a year.
Just these expansions and growth are going to be 1.5 million oz a year, and we are going to go through them. I am going to start with Hope Bay. Hope Bay is going to be our fourth mine that we have built in Nunavut in the last 20 years. It is being built by the same team that built the other three. By the way, how did we grow our production per share over the last 20 years? By building 11 mines. We know how to build mines. We build our own mines. When I build a mine, when we build a mine in Ontario or in Quebec or in Nunavut, it is the same engineering team, it is our engineers. If I had to build a mine in Papua New Guinea, I do not have engineers in Papua New Guinea.
I would be hiring Bechtel or Fluor, and that would make sense. Agnico Eagle, we build our own mines. We are building Hope Bay. I was up there two weeks ago. It is going to go into production starting in 2030. It is going to be between 400,000 oz and 450,000 oz a year, and it is going to operate for decades. We are just in the first 12 km of two parallel 80-km zones.
Guy mentioned yesterday at Boston, 80 km south, he hit yet another hole. It was 17 g over almost 7 m. We are going to be operating there for decades. What I want to show, if I can go backwards, actually, is take a look at the pictures. I really told our team this is not just promises, this is actually happening. Take a look at the pictures. On the top left, you will see three squares.
That camp is already 500 people. That is a brand-new camp. It is going to be another 500 next year. You take a look at the right, that is the upgraded port facility. Take a look at the bottom left, that is the Patch 7, the new underground portal. Take a look at the bottom middle. That is the foundation for the new power plant. Take a look at the bottom right. That is a 5.5 MW windmill. This is happening today. If we take a look at Canadian Malartic, that mine is going to be adding an additional 300,000 oz- 350,000 oz a year. This is a mine that has been around since 1923. We have discovered in the last 10 years alone, 22 million oz. 22 million oz in one mine that is going to be a million-ounce-a-year producer.
This is a mine that is operating. If you take a look at the expansion, look at the bottom middle picture, you see the headframe is in place, you see the paste plant is in place, the operations center is in place. We are already 1.6 km underground on the shaft ahead of schedule. We are ahead of schedule on the ramp. You can take a look at the right. The production hoists are in place. Again, this is going to be another 400,000 oz- 500,000 oz a year, and it is happening now. We are building it today. If we take a look at Detour Lake, this is a mine that has been around for decades. Detour Lake is the largest gold mine in Canada. Malartic is the second-largest gold mine in Canada.
In the last five years, there has been 20 million oz of reserves and resources added at an average cost of $10 an oz. By the way, that 23 million ozs that was added at Malartic was also at about $10 an oz. Between just these two mines, this is go to the best places in the world and try to build a competitive advantage. You have two mines in the best country in the world to operate a mine, and in the last 10 years, you found 43 million oz reserves and resources. These are going to be a million-ounce-a-year producers. To put that into perspective, in the entire world, there are four mines that produce 1 million oz a year. One is in Uzbekistan, one is in Indonesia, and one is in Russia.
The only complex in the Western world is Nevada Gold Mines that produces more than 1 million oz a year, and that is five mines spread over 200 km. Agnico Eagle is, starting in the early 2030s, going to have two of only 6 million-oz producers in the world, and two of only three in the Western world, and they are 100% owned by Agnico Eagle, and they both are going to produce over 1 million oz a year for decades in the safest jurisdiction in the world. By the way, they are both open. You can see at Detour, we are well underway in constructing the underground portal as well as the conveyor system. I will switch now to Upper Beaver, and I will try to go quickly. Upper Beaver is going to produce 200,000 oz- 220,000 oz a year. It is in Ontario. It is in our backyard.
Again, this is not just a long-term promise. You can see the headframe. We are already down 750 m on the ramp ahead of schedule, I should say, on the shaft ahead of schedule, but also ahead of schedule on the ramp. What I am trying to demonstrate here is getting back to this production per share. We are going to deliver this 1.5 million oz of additional production, and it is happening today. At current gold prices, with the strength of the business, we are able to do everything. We are able to build these projects. We are able to strengthen the balance sheet. We have strengthened the balance sheet by $4.5 billion over the last 18 months. We have delivered $1 billion directly to our owners in the first six months of this year. We are able to build these projects, buy back shares at the same time.
When we talk about production per share, not only are we able to build these projects, but in this environment, not only were we able to self-finance them, but we are buying back shares at the same time. I just want to quickly point out that we have not finished. We have not included San Nicolás. We have not included Hammond Reef. We have not included our new Ikkari acquisition. Just those three are in the neighborhood of another 750,000 oz-1 million oz a year gold equivalent. Wrapping it up, Agnico, our business has never been stronger. Our pipeline has never been stronger. I am going to finish where I started on production per share and why it matters so much to us.
Everybody in this room is interested in the gold price, and you want to get leverage to the gold price. Why would you buy a gold equity? You can buy an ETF and take no risk. If you buy a gold equity, by definition, you are taking a little bit more than an ETF, and the only reason you buy a gold equity is because we give you more leverage than an ETF. The traditional way that we think about leverage to gold price is when the gold price goes up, if we deliver the production we said, if we control costs, you get that leverage. Agnico has delivered on its production guidance as far back as I can remember. Our production costs are about $300 an oz below our peers.
What really has differentiated us is that extra level of leverage that we give you, in that if you had bought an Agnico share versus an ETF, Agnico share now gives you 3x the amount of gold that you would have had 20 years ago. That is who we are. That is what we do. We are in the strongest position we have been, and these projects are moving ahead and frankly, coming along pretty well. Thank you.
Thanks. You are mic'd up, so maybe we will go have a seat over here and have a few questions.
Yeah.
Maybe start with one on capital allocation. You talked about the buildup of net cash on the balance sheet and pretty healthy capital return, but where do you see incremental attractiveness to spend? Is it potentially incremental returns to shareholders or M&A or more growth?
Our job is to make you money. You give us money to look for opportunities to invest in the gold space. Do we have an advantage in being able to identify opportunities and then to be able to assess opportunities? Because our strategy, Matt, is that we, frankly, we know every junior in the areas we operate. We know what it costs to build mines. We're well-positioned to identify opportunities, we're well-positioned to assess them, and importantly, we're well-positioned to execute on them, and you've seen that. You see this in the 20-year track record, and you're going to see it over the next 10 years. Now, to your question of capital allocation, we're in a situation right now where even though we have the best pipeline we've ever had, we're generating excess cash.
In the last 18 months, as I mentioned, we strengthened the balance sheet by $4.5 billion. We've increased our dividend. Again, we've been paying a dividend for 43 years. The truth is, if gold price stays where it is, even if we build all of this, we're going to be returning more cash to shareholders. It's your cash. I don't believe in holding your cash, and it'll be returned to our owners.
Okay. Also had a question, you're Canada's largest mining company, and you had a piece in The Financial Post a couple of weeks ago saying Canada needs accelerated decision-making, needs community and workforce capacity, and infrastructure spending. Can you talk about the motivation behind that piece? Are you feeling that things are moving too slowly or what were you trying to signal to the government?
What we're trying to signal to the government, and frankly, this new government knows it, Canada is an exceptionally blessed country based on human resources and natural resources. We have the most educated population in the world. We have enormous potential throughout every province and every territory on a resource basis. What we need is less bureaucracy and less friction to get there, and this new government understands that. The potential is unlimited. We have more opportunities than we can deliver on. When you talk to our operational people, the biggest restriction is going to be people.
Okay. Another one just on your growth outlook. You've got a lot of growth in the early 2030s. You're producing around 3.3 million oz- 3.5 million oz a year. How sustainable is that before you get things like Upper Beaver and Hope Bay ramping up?
Yeah, we'll be giving guidance in February. I think what we might do, and we haven't decided, this year we might give five-year guidance, because as you mentioned, a lot of the production growth starts in 2030 towards 2035. So we're thinking this year, Matt, we haven't decided, but we might give five-year guidance just so that people can actually see definitively some of those numbers in 2030 and 2031.
Okay. That'll be great to see. We've got the timer reset here, but I think we did chew through the time.
Okay
We might end it there. Thanks a lot for the insights.