By way of introduction, I'm Luke Norman. I'm the Chairman and a Co-founder of U.S. Gold Corp. Thank you everyone for taking the time to join us here today to get an update and, and more information around the Pre-Feasibility Study that we released earlier today. The 2025 report, which is a follow on to our 2021. Firstly, I'd like to thank George, his team, the executive team, from the board, for, for their diligence, their effort and work, and to CK so far to date. What they've managed to achieve has been quite remarkable. I think everyone with an, an understanding of just how difficult it is to permit, to operate in North America these days, as a mining company.
In a very short period of time, from August of 2020, when George joined the team and joined the company and built his team, they have initiated and executed a reserve calculation into a 2021 Pre-Feasibility Study. Which was then advanced into completing and executing an Industrial Siting Permit, alongside of and completed, fully permitted, mining-ready, bucket ready in November of 2024. I think a lot of that also in thanks to the fact that we are operating and working within the state of Wyoming, and that also reflects the diligence and efforts of the Department of Environmental Quality of Wyoming. A mining-friendly state, to say the least. Today, George team will take you through this updated Pre-Feasibility Study.
A couple of points I'd like to highlight to everybody who's listening in today is, keep in mind, this pre-feasibility study and the economics therein, they're merely a snapshot of this mineral system at CK. We initiated, again, our pre-feasibility study, our reserve report in 2020, of drilling that we felt was relative to the amount of interest that we could generate to sustain a 10-year mining life. This deposit is open to depth and laterally. In fact, 80% of the drills that we used in this reserve report continued in mineralization or bottomed out in mineralization. A lot of upside within the deposit.
Some other upside that, that will be touched on, but I just want to reiterate, because people have heard us talk about it in the past, there is zero influence on this pre-feasibility report from any kind of waste rock or aggregate sale whatsoever. However, that does reflect another potential very big upside to the project and the economics in the future. Lastly, the level of engineering that has gone into this pre-feasibility, I think has, has put us onto a fast track to be able to get to a full bankable feasibility when we choose to do so, later this year. Right now, we are exploring other optimizations beyond what you see in the pre-feasibility, and bringing in, and bringing forward some additional economic benefit to CK. Enough out of me.
I will hand over the microphone to George Bee, and again, thank you all for taking the time.
Well, thank you very much, Luke. Let me first introduce you to Eric Alexander, who is our CFO, joining us there, and also Kevin Francis, Vice President of Exploration and Technical Services. Thank you for that intro, Luke. We are gonna go through a short presentation. This presentation, along with the updated TRS, is available. The TRS is available on our website. We've updated our corporate presentation, and this presentation will be up shortly. Without further ado, I will be making forward looking statements, so here's some cautionary notes that you can look at your leisure. Essentially what I would like to cover today on the agenda is just looking mostly at the top line, economic, key performance indicators.
We'll give you a little bit of a project description. The project really hasn't changed at all. A little bit of a deep dive into the opportunities, just to reiterate our permitted status. We'll give you an insight as to what we see as the schedule for development, and some thoughts on financing, as well as environmental, social and governance. Here we go. We are now looking with increased gold, copper, silver prices at a reserve, a P1, P2 reserve, on a gold equivalent basis, 1.672 million contained ounces. That's up 16% from where we were in December of 2021. You can see the top line economic performance. We've kept this in a 10-year mine life.
Just to reiterate, we haven't spent a lot of money and a lot of treasury expanding the resource. We know the resource is gonna get bigger. We'll show you a slide on that later. We've kept that into a 20,000 ton per day process rate. The mine plan now is set to produce about 110,000 gold equivalent ounces per year. AISC at sev- $937. Initial capital up a little ways from December 2021, at $277 million. Importantly, as you look at the NPV of a project, we're looking at a pre-tax NPV of $459 million. That's up from $323 million. That's a 42% increase in our pre-tax NPV.
On a post-tax basis, $356, and that's a 39% improvement on where we were. The payback period has also improved. I think it's important to note that we have set our base case at $2,100 gold, $4.10 copper. You know, as you look at those prices today, I was just looking there, I think we're $2,927 gold and $4.58 copper. You can cast your gaze up to a $3,000 and $4.50 copper case, and look at the NPV just shy of $1 billion. Internal rate of return, 60%. You know, we, we're already there, but, you know, we've been conservative in the numbers that we have presented here.
Let's just talk a few about a few of the assumptions, and I, you know, I won't go into the great detail with these. When you look at the gold at $2,100, that re- represents 62% of the revenue. Copper at $4.10 represents about 36% of the revenue. It really is, you know, a copper gold project. Copper being a strategic mineral, we're very excited to be a producer in the good old U.S. of A. here. You can see mining cost per ton, process cost per ton.
What makes this thing work, and, you know, what holds down the costs, you can see, strip ratio, 0.9 to 1 waste to ore ratio, and we've got very short hauls. This is a very compact site. We're also operating in the state of Wyoming. We've got a great power cost, indicated from our local power provider at $0.079 per kilowatt hour. We, our power provider is a power producer within the state, and, you know, we're just down the road from a, a, a refinery. Diesel cost at $2.66. You know, we're gonna benefit from, you know, low labor costs, being so close to Cheyenne. It's gonna be a great place for our workforce to live and work. Capital cost.
Total initial capital cost, it at $277 million, you know, that includes a little bit of, when you look at the list to the left, it includes a little bit of holdback from the initial pre-production phase. $277 million, sustaining capital at $13 million to essentially ascend, increase, in phases, the tailings management facility. The project really hasn't changed that much from where we put out our initial PFS. We're going to go and just chat about the resources and reserves, what's happened there, the mine plan, the process, which is really very simple. All plain vanilla technology here employed in this project. Reserves and resources. I'm just gonna explain a little bit about this image.
The image with the topography, that is the resource pit shell, that is floated on $1,860 per ounce gold, $3.92 copper, silver plays a fairly minor role. Overall, about a 45 degree slope. We've got very good rock. The reserve pit, that's projected up above the topography. In actual fact, the project outcrops on surface, the gold on the reserve pit is set at $1,755, $3.77 per pound copper. You can see the ore body extends at depth. You know, we haven't spent treasury on extending the drilling and the drilling campaign below the pit and to the southeast of the pit.
What we wanted to do, and we've said this many times, is put the value proposition together, get the permit so we know that we can mine it, and in due course, we can then expand this resource, beyond where we are now. You know, we are part of the Silver Crown mining district. It's a historic district from back in the late 1800s, and, yeah, there are additional opportunities, and certainly within extensions to our ore body. The mine plan. The mine plan is again, very simple. We are gonna be mining 30-foot benches. We'll be employing 150 ton class trucks, 20-yard loaders. We will be producing enough material to feed the mill at 20,000 tons per day. We've done all the geotechnical work on the pit shell.
We had Piteau Associates do that to feasibility study level. Including extensive drilling into the pit walls. We will be mining it in four pushbacks, four phases, The initial phases have a very, very low strip ratio, and that leads to a very quick payback on the project, so that, because some of our best rock is right there at surface. Here's the mine layout. You can see the pit in the background. There's a mine-ready line. Very short haul from the pit to the primary crusher. We then crush the rock onto a primary, primary rock stockpile. We go into the grinding section. We're essentially grinding down initially to 90 microns. There's a pebble mill within the circuit.
We would then go into rougher flotation in the filtration section. We'll have a regrind down to 30 microns to produce a concentrate with froth flotation. The water is a big issue in the southwest and we are very conscious of our water consumption, so we went straight to a dry stack tailings scenario. We filter the tailings, we filter the concentrate. The concentrate gets shipped offsite, and the tailings get mechanically handled onto a tailings facility. It's a, you know, with a 4-mile access road from essentially public, a public roads, we have access and warehousing. We don't have to carry a lot of inventory because of our location.
We, we can rely on a lot of the OEMs in the area, whether it be Gillette, Salt Lake City, Denver, we're well positioned to draw stores and equipment from there. Just looking at upside opportunities, you know, Luke did mention the fact that we have not included any value to the rock. You know, what we're gonna be doing is essentially mining our ore, processing the ore, producing the concentrate. We then take a little bit of our rock and we take take it to buttress the dry stack tailings, and then cover the tailings before we revegetate. We're left with about 40 million tons of rock from our current mine plan, sitting in two piles. That rock has been sort of pre-sorted.
We've tested that rock. We're going to use it for our own construction purposes. And when we did that work on looking at that rock for construction, we found, we found that it was really good aggregate. We also found that it's really good rail ballast, which is a higher specification. So we've got 40 million tons of rock there, and, you know, we, we looked at our neighbors, Mountain Area Minerals, about 3 miles to our south, that's selling their rock for $20-$25 a ton. Really, we've paid for the mining already, so there's a great source of rock there, for sale to the local market. And, you know, as a reminder, we're situated 100 miles from Denver. You've got Boulder, Colorado, Loveland, Fort Collins, Cheyenne, a lot of growth in that area.
That rock is going to be worth quite a lot of money. We haven't included it in our economics at all, but just say you've got a $10 margin, there's another $400 million tons of potential revenue just in our current mine plan. Our mine plan is gonna get bigger, as we go for the additional resources, and then the rock continues on beyond. There's a huge out opportunity aggregate. Obviously, we haven't permitted that. We, we, we see an avenue to permitting it, but it's a great opportunity beyond the copper and gold mine. The reserves and resources will grow. We're currently working on the metallurgical potential upgrade. That's using the Jameson cells from Glencore Technology.
We, we, we're still looking into that with the potential of improved recovery. The Jameson Cell occupy a smaller footprint, and we're told that they have lower operating costs, so there, there may, may very well be an enhancement there. You know, as a reminder, we're just using froth flotation to produce a copper concentrate. We haven't included anything which looks to reclaiming any residual gold in tailings. You know, there's a, there's a potential to improve gold recovery by treating the tailings, but now, that's something we can look at in the future. Reclamation and closure. You know, if we do sell our waste, we can reduce that, those waste stockpiles. We could re- reduce the footprint.
You know, we also want to see whether we can work with the city of Cheyenne to use the mined-out pit for water storage, which would also help with our closure. At the moment, our design construction period is 30 months. We think we can tighten that up, which would further improve the internal rate of return. Permits, yeah, as Luke mentioned, in May of 2023, we were approved on our Industrial Siting Permit. That's a mechanism in Wyoming to the state to put money into a big capital expenditure to mitigate the impacts of, you know, the influx of people or, or the need for additional infrastructure. Our Mine Operating Permit approved, fully approved by November.
It was approved earlier in the year, but we had to get our Air Quality Permit, which was approved in November 2024. We're ready to go. Essentially, we'll have to deal with the county. We just need to send them a site plan and then normal course building and fire inspections with the county. You know, as a reminder, we don't have any federal engagement, being, you know, with being on private land. We're in the Wyoming, Wyoming jurisdiction. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, certainly for our foot- our current footprint, say that we have no permit necessary, and we have clearance from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. When can all this happen?
Look, the PFS, we're just checking out the Jameson technology, looking at that project execution, execution schedule. The feasibility study is well advanced, and that's because we, we hired Samuel Engineering, back in, back in, April of 2022 to actually fast-track towards feasibility. We've done a lot of the work towards the feasibility study. There's no additional drilling required, except for the resource beyond our current 10-year reserve. We essentially are just doing the engineering work. You know, what is the fastest that we could do things? This would all be subject to board approval and financing, but, you know, we could, we could look to finishing our feasibility study toward the end of Q2, maybe into Q3.
Financing, I think we can start that in parallel, you know, with a possibility of breaking ground toward the end of the year. On a fast-track basis, that would give us gold in the end of 2027. A lot of things to do in the meantime, so that's the fastest it could, it could, potentially occur. How are we gonna pay for all this? Well, you know, we would hope that we have a pathway to project financing through 80% debt and perhaps 20% on equity. We, we, we've been very careful with our capital structure. Management insiders, we're owners. We, we, we don't want to blow out the cap table.
You know, we will look for equity financing on attractive terms, while we pursue potential financing avenues, and it includes all of the possibilities from equipment, certainly equipment financing, maybe forward sale of our initial production, royalty options, offtake agreements, and so on. We feel that there's a definitely a lot of interest and in the project, and certainly as we produce a very clean copper concentrate, we think that that's going to be in demand, and that certainly offers an avenue. Now, how have we been doing things the right way? Well, you know, our board insisted back in 2021, that we look at our environmental, social, and governance.
We, we had an audit at that point, and since then, we've actually followed that up with an independent audit through Digbee. We had a maiden Digbee rating, BBB. That's pretty good. We, we certainly have identified where we will be improving, but we're a formative development company, it's a pretty good rating right out the gate. With that, we're also it also complements the work that we're doing on Equator Principles to ease the financing aspects. With that, you know, we're going to have this presentation on the website, but I think we can now hand over to the audience, and perhaps answer some questions to follow up on any queries.
Yeah, just, just to clarify that, George, by way of audience, we've just to keep everything in order today, listeners, we're just opening the table up to the analysts who are on the call. I think the analysts' questions will probably encompass everything that you as shareholders might have questions. Of course, most of you know how to get in touch with us. All our information is on the website. If you do have questions outside of what you could be covered today, you can reach out to any one of us by way of our contact within the website. I see Andrew Mikitchook , up and speaker ready to go. We'll let you fire off.
George and Luke, thank you for a very comprehensive, presentation. Just a couple of questions. To, to be clear, the feasibility that's coming, is that just essentially the, basic engineering or a portion of the detailed engineering or going ahead? Is that, is that the difference?
No, we, you know, as I mentioned, the Samuel Engineering have done this update for us, but we contracted them a long time ago. You know, my background at Barrick, we could fast-track projects and, I'm just short of the bankroll at the moment to be able to.
Mm-hmm
... to go build this thing. They have done a lot of work on the, certainly on the plant design and so on. You know, in terms of, moving to the feasibility study, it's essentially de- desktop work. We've done all the site geotechnical. We've got 140 test pits across the property, so we know what the substrate looks like. We've done seismic lines, we've done split spoon, we've done the feasibility work on the, on the pit. It's really just assembling the information that we've gathered over the, over the last, four years. And it's, largely desktop. That's, that's why we can, produce a feasibility study in fairly short order. Does that answer your question, Andrew?
It does. Then maybe just on a different question, to come back to this, to the CapEx, that roughly, I'd, I'd call it 20% increase. Is there anything specific in there that carried more of the inflation, or is it just kind of the broad-based inflation any of us is suffering when we, when we go to a restaurant or purchase things?
Yeah, look, I think it's generally the inflation. You know, we were looking post-COVID at problems with supply chain, with scarcity, because factories have closed down. I think things have normalized now, but we essentially are just seeing the effects of an inflation there. There are a couple of aspects that we did have to include as a consequence of our permitting exercise. You know, we felt initially that membrane, that a soil liner was adequate because we don't see any acid rock drainage from the project. But to satisfy the authorities, we've put a composite liner with a membrane down, just to be absolutely double sure, belt and suspenders, that we don't have any potential for acid rock drainage.
There are a few, there are a few enhancements associated with the, the things that we had to do, for the permitting. Yeah, we, we, that accounts for most of the increase.
Okay, just last question before I hand back the microphone. This concept of the aggregate or waste rock or ballast, you guys highlighted that this would require an amendment to the permitting. I'm not sure if that's the accurate wording or it's a completely different permit for something completely different, but what, what is the process, process and timeline of something like that?
Okay, the... You know, we, we essentially have, you know, during the course of the project life, there will be accumulating, just on the current mine plan, 40 million tons of rock. That rock is, is, is going to be excellent source of aggregate and rail ballast. We can, we, you know, in speaking with the Department of Environmental Quality, Land Quality Division, we would have to essentially go and talk to them about any impact on the air quality. Because most of the processing equipment would be electrical driven, there wouldn't be a great impact.
You know, we, we, we would need to work with our local community and, and so on, but we think that there's a very plausible pathway to a permit to be able to market that, certainly by truck in the short term, and then in the longer term, perhaps through rail transportation. You know, as the, as the project grows, and the opportunity increases, then there would be additional amendments to the current permit. It, it, it essentially would be an amendment to our existing permits at the moment.
Yes. Look, we'll move on here, and thank you very much again, Andrew. Don Blyth, I see you there now. We'll hand the microphone over to you. You're on mute, Don.
There, there we go. Can you hear me now?
Yeah, we can. Thank you.
Perfect. Yeah, congratulations, George, George, Luke, the whole team there. Great, PFS update. You know, pretty similar to the 2021 PFS, in terms of the scale of project and, and, very much in line with what you've been telegraphing, making the analyst's job easier. A few questions. First, I was, I was impressed the, normally you see the gold price assumption move up, your re- you know, your reserves increase, and that's usually because you're bringing in marginal material. In this case, your grade seems to have, you know, stayed the same or even got a little bit, little bit better. How'd you manage to pull that off?
Look, you, you know, we are drill limited. You know, if we had more density of drilling, we could have pulled in additional reserves and resources. The increase in the metal prices, gold and copper, allowed us to pull in a few of the surrounding resources into proven and probable reserves. We, as I've said, we know that our mineralization continues at depth. We've got a nice trend down to the southeast. We need to get after that. Don, it's been hard raising capital. We, we, we haven't raised capital without due consideration to dilution. As a consequence, you know, we focused the treasury on proving up, you know, what we have into an economic assessment, and then permitting that.
I think that the, you know, at, at the moment, the increase is merely producing or pulling in some of the resources, which are now above cut-off grade.
Gotcha. You also mentioned that your initial assessment of the Jameson Cells was sort of inconclusive, so you went ahead and just used the conventional flotation circuit for this PFS. You know, it's obviously not a, not a no, so you will be looking at it for the feasibility study. Given the tight timetable of, of the getting that, if you're, if you're getting the feasibility out in, in, in a year, when would you have to kind of make that decision of a go or no-go on the Jameson?
All right. You know, what happened was, you know, we were approached by Glencore Technology. We, we saw them down at the MINExpo INTERNATIONAL in Las Vegas. They, we, we had a little bit of a hiccup getting a test unit up to the lab that we were using, Base Metallurgical Labs, up in Kamloops, British Columbia. We managed to get that test unit up and running. We had a certain amount of sample which was sitting there, or which, which we sent to, which was over from our previous metallurgical testing. We were able to get that up. We were able to essentially mirror and confirm with Jameson, the conventional results. We think that there's opportunity to improve recovery.
Kevin Francis is going to go and collect another sample so that we can get that up to the Glencore Technology lab up in Sudbury. A larger sample so that they can really essentially find the secret sauce that that is associated with their technology. We, you know, we feel confident based on, you know, this technology having been around since 1986 that, you know, there, there's potential there. We need to get a larger sample out there, get that, that, sampling and test work done. We think that we can probably do that in the next two months. You know, stay tuned for that.
Yeah, certainly, and intriguing, intriguing possibility. I guess on the, on the, aggregate, everybody's favorite, the, the rock that doesn't, doesn't contain metal, how are you going to give a sense of, of the, you know, commercialization potential of that? Obviously, you've talked about this, you know, 40 million tons at, you know, call it, call it $10, you know, rough value. How will you play the ... I know there's all, all sorts of rules about what you can say in a, in a feasibility study. Will you be able to give some sort of sense of, of the timeframe you're looking at, and how much you think you could sell over, over what periods? Are you really allowed to do that at all?
Look, we, we've conducted a study. There's a consultant, Burgex, out of Salt Lake City. We've conducted a study with Burgex. They have done a market study. You know, there's a, there's a certainly within our area and within probably trucking distance, there's a 6 million ton per year demand for aggregate. Things are just growing in leaps and bounds along the Colorado Front Range between Denver and Cheyenne. That demand isn't going away. There are infrastructure projects. There's potential improvements or renovation to the missile defense situation. There's wind farms going up. There's a huge demand, which is difficult to serve at the moment. As a consequence, we didn't want to confuse the issue. We've got a very good copper and gold project.
You know, as we, as we conduct these additional studies, talk to the authorities about, you know, how we, how we can benefit them, you know, the state of Wyoming would get $0.60 per ton, for every ton that we sold on a royalty, coming off the state grounds.
Okay.
We will be looking at that, at that, in, in the, in the future. Hopefully, we have been in conversations with some mining contractors, construction contractors, they have expressed interest in the rock that we're going to produce. You know, maybe we can trade mining for rock. Maybe we can forward sell some of our rock, because it's very, very tough in our area, and certainly in Colorado, to permit a quarry. It would be putting this rock, rather than burying it, putting it to beneficial use, just makes sense for the state, for ourself and our, ourselves and our shareholders, and reduces the footprint of a project. It's something that we're gonna pursue, pursue vigorously, Don.
Do you think there, there is the possibility that, that, the aggregate, may, may play a sense in, in part of the, financing solution?
That we, you know, we, we, we've had initial discussions with, with a number of companies and whether, you, you know, you... Nothing's done until it's done, but certainly there's a great level of interest in this rock resource. You know, again, it's so difficult to find good rock for the aggregate and certainly for rail ballast. Yeah, I think there's a possibility.
Excellent. Well, congratulations, guys. One of a very few projects this close to being ready to put shovels in the ground.
Thank you, Don.
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Don. Okay, I'm gonna continue here, sequentially in terms of how the analysts have popped up, just so that I'm not showing any favoritism either way, and apologies to everyone who's having to wait, but Heiko Ihle, you've got the microphone.
Hey there. Can you guys hear me okay?
Yes.
Yes.
Yes, we can.
Awesome. Hey, question for you. Why is the gold price that you guys use in your study so low? I mean, you're at $2,100. I was looking through the full document online earlier. You do have the metal price sensitivity in table 19.9, on page 9246. I mean, at $3,000 gold, which is a whole lot closer to where we are today, you're looking at an IRR of 60%. What is the market, and frankly, that myself for that matter, what are we missing, and why did you elect to use $2,100 gold in the base of the study?
You know, look, I think at $2,100 gold, you know, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but, you know, I think that's, you know, we, we, we felt that that was consistent with some of the long-term projections that we saw. Certainly consistent with a three-year rolling average. You know, one wants to be conservative. You want to make sure that you've got a robust project, and I think it reflects that it's a robust project at the moment. Yeah, we, I think it was just a conservatism on our part.
Yeah. If, if, if you like us at $2,100, you'll love us at $3,000.
That's exactly what I wanted you to say. There was not anything obvious that I'm missing. This was just essentially conservatism, because it was just one of the first figures that popped out at me when I, when I looked at the release this morning. Then just a quick follow-up, so I don't hog your question queue too badly here. What was the total cost of the study?
Oh, gosh! Total cost of the study. You know, we, I haven't separated that out. Luke, you know, I think, this last four years, when we look at what we've raised for drilling and what we've, you know, put into studies and keeping the, the, the, the, the company, going, you know, we, we have been judicious as we've, raised money.
Yeah, I'll step in there, actually, George, 'cause look, I mean, we do, we do have numbers, and we're happy to get into that. Just, we don't have them in front of us, Heiko. However, it, it is something I'd love to reiterate to the marketplace, especially when we are out in, in, in a platform like this today, is the hard yards have been done by this company. The money has been raised-
Yeah
spent, you know, well, well in advance of, well, of $30 million into combined efforts of engineering and, and reserve reports, et cetera, et cetera. You know, that dilution has been and gone. We're not staring down the barrel of any other large dilutive events. There's not a bunch of drilling that needs to be done to further the engineering to get to bankable feasibility. As George has alluded to, a lot of that is now essentially desktop undertaking. It's also down to when we're ready and prepared to sort of timestamp a bankable feasibility study, because we are looking at so many other advances and, and optimizations to this project that just further improve the economics of it.
I think for a, for a starting point, for a base case, with a very conservative metals price to be able to showcase CK as, you know, just the reserve portion of this big mineral system, it, it's, it's pretty exciting for us. We will continue to, you know, advance this project, but the, the large dollars have been raised. The short answer. Other than obviously the development dollars.
Perfect. Well, thank you guys so much. I'll get back in queue, and I'll leave you with this. It's nice to see the stock up today on a day when gold is marginally down. Thank you.
Thank you, Heiko.
Thank you, Heiko. Okay, again, just following the order sequentially, gents, we have Jake. Jake, you've got the microphone. Thank you. Jake Sekelsky, of course, sorry, from AGP Capital.
Hey, guys, thanks for taking my questions. Most of my items have been touched on, but I'm just curious on the financing package. I think, George, you mentioned you're sort of targeting potentially an 80-20 split. I'm just curious, given the copper component at CK, and it obviously being a critical mineral here in the U.S., are there any low-cost state or federal funding programs that you're exploring to take a bite out of that CapEx figure?
Yeah, look, we, we, we've we're obviously aware of that. We obviously would like to take advantage of that. We, we, we stayed away from federal, federal funding, bringing us into NEPA. I, I, you know, I don't, you know, now with the status of where we're at, I think that's certainly something that we could, we could look to. Yeah, I think that financing is something that we're going to be turning our attention to. You know, we've got a lot of the engineering done. We can get people into the data room while we conclude some of these additional studies. You know.
Hey, hey, George, let me, let me, let me add on that, if I may. Jake, you know, I mean, there's a great point you raised there on. You know, with, with the inclusion of copper as a critical material, you know, not a critical mineral, you know, we're, we're still waiting for that to sort of make its way through and, you know, and, and hopefully have some, you know, some, some grants or federal funding. One of the other areas that we're looking at, and, you know, we're hoping that, you know, with some of the administration changes, you know, recent administration changes, there's potential for some tax credits and/or deductions, again, with copper being included as a, as a critical material.
That, you know, that could save, you know, if we get some tax credits, that's, you know, right off the top on having to pay federal income taxes. Don't have what that is at this point, but that could potentially really help the economics.
Got it. Okay, that's helpful. That's all for me. Thanks again. Congrats.
Yeah. Thank you, Jake. Okay, on to Joseph Reagor. Joe's with Roth Capital Partners in the U.S., of course. You're muted, Joe. Okay, just Oh, there he is.
Yeah, no, no questions for me, Luke.
Okay, wonderful! All right, we'll head on, Paul O'Brien with Velocity Capital.
Good morning, everyone. Congrats on the update. Just a couple of quick clarifications on the royalty. As in the press release, 2.1%, is that the entire, the entire project state royalty, and does it also apply to the aggregate opportunity, or is that a different royalty structure?
Yeah, 2.1% on the on the copper, gold, silver. The aggregate would be separate. That's a separate royalty structure. It averages out at about $0.60 per ton.
Okay, I'd say, yes, it does apply to the entire property.
Uh, the-
The two-
The royal-
The two-
Royalty, on the
Go ahead.
Yeah, the royalty, the 2.1% would apply to all of the copper and gold production, and the aggregate would apply to only the waste that we sold off-site.
Yeah. Got it. Great. Secondly, just in terms of the sustaining capital, looks like you applied inflation across everything, but I think the sustaining capital actually decreased as, as, as low as it is anyway to start with. Can you explain why it's so low from the last study to this study? I think it went from 15 down to $13 million total.
Yeah, you're right. What we've done since that first study, and I, I mentioned a little bit about the tailings storage facility, we got Tierra Group International involved in redesigning our tailings storage facility. We, we'd additionally constructed it from, as a light, you know, on the site plan from west to east, and we, we changed it to construct it from east to west. The sustaining capital, essentially, in the initial capital, we build the first phase, and then we have two subsequent phases to expand the tailings management facility to where it goes. That $13 million essentially is mostly associated with two additional expansions to the tailings management facility.
You know, some of the rock associated with the stabilizing that, we are viewing that as, essentially waste dump and operating cost, to cap the tailings management facility. The sustaining capital is pretty low. You know, we don't have big equipment rebuilds. Everything is based on new equipment and so on. I imagine as a, as a mine life increases, if and when it does, there would be additional sustaining capital. We don't have any expansions plans. We, we build it at 20,000 tons per day from the get-go. You know, that kind of explains those figures.
Okay, that's all I have, guys. Thank you.
Right, I think we can wrap this up here. I, I, I'd just like to add, you know, some of the key takeaways, at least from my perspective. Obviously, having a fully permitted project in the U.S., shovel-ready, with a very tight capital structure, share structure, is a huge advantage to us. You know, even using $2,500 gold, if we look at those headline numbers, you know, pre-tax, $680 million NPV, post-tax, $510 million NPV. A very manageable CapEx of $277 million. You know, we're approximately around a 2 to 1 NPV CapEx ratio, which is far more attractive than we were in 2021. Very low AISC relative to, I think, the peer group.
You know, around the $2,000, or sorry, about a $940, excuse me, all-in sustaining cost. Very low payback to years. We didn't touch on this, but in the future, I think, if you analysts or anyone has any questions about it, our IRR, of course, was within the realm of 2021's IRR, but our years to payback have dropped by a half a year. Clearly, the economics are a little bit more robust than 2021, from that standpoint. And that's all in, all in part to this very low strip, 0.9 to 1.
Look, when we go following this ore body to depth, whether we do so with a future drill program to increase resources, reserves under S-K 1300, the rules are definitely different to NI 43-101. You know, that strip could come up, but as we reflected today, outside of the economics of our pre-feasibility study, that a higher strip would mean a more of an aggregate, more of a potential economic boost to this overall project through the future years. Look, that's me, that's us in terms of wrapping up. George, I'm sure, might have a little cap off himself, but again, thank you everyone for taking the time joining us today. This has been recorded. We'll release the recorded link at some point. It'll be on the website.
If anyone wants to come back and, or go back and go through the highlights or, or check on something we had stated or have claimed, by all means, that will be up on the website. Thank you all again. George, I'll give you the final closing remarks or comments.
No, no, thank you for your time. Look, we, we're delighted to talk about this project. You know, it's so easy to get to if you're in Denver. You know, we're an hour and a half away. We'd be happy to host a visit. Really, seeing is believing, and we are there to answer any questions. With that, thank you for your attention and have a great day.