Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Vista Gold 's feasibility study results conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. At that time, participants are asked to press star one to register for a question. For assistance during the call, please press star zero on your touch-tone phone. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today. It is now my pleasure to introduce Pamela Solly, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Natasha. Good day, everyone, and thank you for joining the Vista Gold Corp. Investor conference call and webcast. I'm Pamela Solly, Vice President of Investor Relations. During the course of this call and the question and answer session, we will be making forward-looking statements. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual results, performance, or achievements of Vista Gold Corp. to be materially different from results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Please refer to our most recently filed Form 10-Q for details on risks and other important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in our forward-looking statements and the cautionary note regarding estimates of mineral resources and mineral reserves. Today's presentation will be posted to the Vista Gold website at www.vistagold.com at the end of this call.
I'll now turn the call over to Fred Earnest, President and CEO.
Thank you, Pam, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We are pleased to welcome you to this Investor conference call where we will be presenting the results of our recently completed feasibility study for our Mt Todd Gold Project in Northern Territory, Australia. I'm joined today by Doug Tobler, our Chief Financial Officer, and Maria Vallejo, our Director of Projects and Technical Services, both of whom have been instrumental in the completion of this feasibility study. Today marks an important milestone for our company. The feasibility study confirms the strong potential of the Mt Todd project, validating the strategic vision we are pursuing and laying a solid foundation for advancing the project. The results are not only technically robust but also economically compelling, reinforcing our confidence in the long-term value this project can deliver to shareholders.
We look forward to walking you through the key findings of the study, outlining our next steps, and addressing any questions that you may have. With that as an introduction, let's just jump in. We will be making some forward-looking statements, as Pam has indicated. I think it's important just to set the stage for everyone to realize that this marks a paradigm shift in our development strategy for the Mt Todd Gold Project. Some of the very significant changes that have occurred as we have completed this feasibility study include a change in the size. Previously, our work had been concentrated and focused on a 50,000-ton-per-day operation or 17.5 million tons per annum. Today, we're looking at a 15,000-ton-per-day project or 5.3 million ton-per-annum project. This has helped us to achieve a 59% reduction in initial CapEx, and we'll talk about what those numbers are here in a moment.
We have prioritized grade over tons. We've incorporated contract mining in addition to contract power generation, which has been incorporated in previous studies. One of the outcomes of this study is a very consistent annual gold production profile over an extended mine life of the project. The plant itself has been designed with fit-for-purpose design principles, and we'll talk a little bit more about what that means. We have balanced the workforce and now anticipate that somewhere between 80% and 90% of our workforce will be brought in on a fly-in, fly-out basis rather than being based in the Northern Territory. What does this all mean? What results have we generated? I think that the big numbers are that the CapEx has been reduced from over $1 billion to $425 million.
Annual average production is estimated to be 153,000 ounces of gold per year over the first 15 years of the mine life. This is achieved from an average grade of ore delivered to the crushing plant of 1.04 grams per ton over the first 15 years of the life of the project, 0.97 life of mine. We now report 5.2 million ounces of mineral reserves. This is combined proven and probable reserves. There's a 10.6 million-ounce total resource, and we refer you to some slides later in the deck for a breakdown of measured, indicated, and inferred. The economics of this study have been completed using a $2,500 gold price and a $0.67 foreign exchange rate. The study estimates an after-tax net present value at a 5% discount rate of $1.1 billion U.S.
All of the numbers that we'll be talking about on the call today are going to be in US dollars unless indicated otherwise. The after-tax IRR at the $2,500 gold price is 27.8%. If we look at those numbers on a gold price closer to spot, i.e., we've used $3,300, you see that the after-tax NPV (5%) jumps to $2.2 billion, and the after-tax IRR at that gold price is 44.7%. Our all-in sustaining cost is estimated to be $1,449 an ounce. We'll talk a little bit about the changes and how that number has evolved from our previous studies. The mine life is now estimated to be 30 years. These numbers represent the significant changes that we've made reference to.
If we try and summarize this perhaps in a little bit different light before getting into the details of the numbers, the Mt Todd project, as it's now designed, is a leading near-term development opportunity. It's designed as an Australian project. This may sound like a trite thing to say, but there's been some fundamental differences in the way we've approached the design of the project. As we look at a smaller project, we used smaller Western Australia gold operations as a model, and we've adopted a number of changes, contract mining being one, fit-for-purpose design being another. We've selected a group of engineers, and Maria is going to talk about those engineers and consultants here in a moment, who have extensive experience bringing projects in the western part of Australia through engineering design all the way through construction, commissioning, and into operation.
We feel that the work that's been done to change the size of the project means that this is now right-sized with the right scope. 15,000 tons per day is a size of project where the equipment that will be used is very common in Australia. It's very typical of gold operations in particularly the Western part of the country. We think that this makes this project a little bit easier for, one, to be constructed. It makes it easier to find people to operate it. We have now come to the conclusion that with the competition for workers and the skills that are required, there will be a significant fly-in, fly-out component of our workforce, which will allow us to attract the people that we need and make us very comparable to many of our highly valued Australian peers.
The development option that we've selected has resulted in, as I mentioned, a 59% reduction in the initial capital cost with the changes in cutoff grade. I haven't mentioned these previously, but we are now using a 0.5 gram per ton cutoff grade as the basis for the reserve estimation and the mine plans. By having a large deposit like the Mt Todd project, we enjoy the flexibility of being able to consider a higher cutoff grade, which has allowed us to increase the reserve grade. This was done with the idea of achieving a 1 gram per ton reserve grade, and I'm very pleased that we've hit that target. In the first years of the project, the first 15 years of the project will exceed that grade. Life of mine will be just a little bit below it. We also have a very competitive all-in sustaining cost.
As we've looked at our peers, and Doug will review a comparison of how our all-in sustaining costs compare to our peers, we see that we're very competitive with similar-sized operations. I think all of this leads to and lends itself to the credibility of the work that's been done by our consultants. We continue to maintain, and the project continues to exhibit the leverage to gold price that our shareholders have become accustomed to. I think you see that in the numbers going from $2,500- $3,300 gold price, where the NPV of the project doubles from $1.1 billion- $2.2 billion. We have not evaluated expansion opportunities as part of the development of the project.
We have designed and prepared project layouts so that the project can be expanded, and we believe that that will likely happen, but it is not included in the work that's completed in this feasibility study. We now have established some bookends with the larger-scale project evaluated previously and this smaller initial-scale project, which can be expanded, that demonstrate considerable optionality. We think that this will play importantly into the development strategy. We've lowered the risk profile of the project by using a contract mining evaluation or scenario as part of our evaluation. We minimize some of the risk of sourcing equipment, sourcing operators. We continue to use a third-party generator for our owner-operator of the power plant to ensure that we have a reliable source of power using the natural gas pipeline that already exists, thereby lowering our cost of energy.
All of these things roll into the feasibility study to allow us to report the results that have been summarized so far. Getting into those results in a little bit more detail, I'm not going to read this table to you, but maybe I could just highlight a couple of things. We've already talked about average annual gold production of 153,000 ounces of gold over the first half of the life of the mine. It's 146,000 ounces per year life of mine. We've talked about the grade of the ore delivered to the plant. Recoveries are now estimated to be roughly 88.5%. That's on a life-of-mine basis. The cash costs are just shy of $1,400 an ounce for the first 15 years. We talked about all-in sustaining costs at $1,449 for the first 15 years of the project and just shy of $1,500 an ounce life of mine.
The stripping ratio has increased. We're now reporting a stripping ratio of 4:1 life of mine. That is a result of some changes in the pit slopes, particularly on the west side of the deposit, but also it's the result of raising the cutoff grade. I think one point that merits some discussion is that this intermediate grade waste, mineralized material that we're choosing not to send to the plant, the 0.35 to 0.5 gram per ton material will be segregated in the waste rock dump and will be available at some future time for processing should the economics of the project merit such. The initial capital, as we've indicated, is $425 million. This results in a capital efficiency, i.e., initial capital divided by total ounces produced of $97 an ounce for the life of the project.
The cost-benefit ratio, the NPV divided by the initial capital, is 2.5 to 1. That's a significant improvement from our previous study. You see the numbers for sustaining capital and reclamation and closure costs. I'm very pleased with the results of the study and what we've demonstrated here. The after-tax payback is estimated to be 2.7 years. Just as a reminder for those who may be new to the Mt Todd story, the map on the right-hand side shows the location of the Mt Todd project. It's located in the very northern part of the Northern Territory. It's about 250 km southeast of the capital and port city of Darwin, approximately 10 km east of the Stuart Highway, with paved road access all the way to the front gate of the project.
We believe that Mt Todd is one of the most easily accessible development stage projects in all of Australia, and that obviously gives us some very distinct advantages. I'm going to turn the time over to Maria to talk about the team of engineers and consultants that we worked with and some of their experience, and she will also walk us through the mining summary. Maria?
Hello, everybody. Thank you, Fred. To chair the group of consultants that supported the completion of all the technical studies for this feasibility report, we have GR Engineering Services. They are based in Perth. They have over 20 years of proven record of delivering engineering, consulting, and construction. They are an EPC company. The reason why we selected, among others, is because they are quite experienced in processes of similar size. They have been participants of Bellevue, Mungari, Deflector, Gruyere Gold, King of the Hills, etc. They are the study actors, and they are also in charge of major infrastructure and the process capital. We have Mining Plus as well, with over 20 years of experience, Australian-based. They supported us with the reserve estimation, the mine plan, and the schedules. Tetra Tech, based here in Lakewood, Colorado, supported us with the mineral resources estimation, water management, and the closure studies.
They have been our consultants for over a decade. We have Tierra Group International, based in Colorado, although not Australian. Their reputation lies in third-party independent reviews. They have a critical eye. They work with corporations like Barrick Gold, B2Gold, and Newmont as well. They supported us with the tailings management, the design, as well as the waste rock dump geotechnical studies and the construction plan. We have WSP, which supported us based in Perth for all the pit geotechnical services. One new item of this project, as Fred mentioned earlier, is that we have invited a mining contractor to provide us with cost estimation. This is done under confidentiality. One key item is this: no budgetary quote. It's actually worked on using the data of Mt Todd and the third-party power generator pricing, as Fred mentioned earlier.
Moving on to mining, the mine designs and schedules, as we mentioned earlier, were completed by Mining Plus. We completed five optimized phases in order to prioritize higher grade material being sent to the processing plant in the early years of the life of mine. We conducted extensive pit optimization and schedule optimization, which is what is guaranteeing us the nice production profile we have at the moment. This is a conventional truck and shovel pit operation with established conventional match in terms of this equipment. We also engaged Orica, which supported us with a blast fragmentation study and provided us with detailed drill and blast parameters for every single material that we have at the mine, at the pit. The strip ratio, as Fred mentioned earlier, is now we are looking at the life of mine strip ratio of 4:1.
Part of this is the addition of 71 million tons of material that, at the moment, are considered mineralized waste. It's segregated at the waste dump, but it has the potential to add almost a million ounces in contained gold.
Thank you, Maria. Moving on to metallurgy. The ore body at Mt Todd contains free milling non-refractory ore. The gold particle sizes vary between 5 and 25 microns and is found in quartz calcite sulfide veins. We continue to treat the Mt Todd ore body as a very hard ore body. You see some of the Bond work index information on this slide, but I think it's important to note that we continue to maintain an ore sorting step in the process flow sheet. We've reduced that from two stages to one stage, and that allows us to get rid of some of the harder material in the ore body prior to it being delivered to the grinding circuit. There's been an extensive amount of test work completed to, first of all, determine, evaluate, and then ultimately confirm the process flow sheet.
We'll talk about that flow sheet in just a moment, but there's been metallurgical testing conducted in both Australia and the United States. Ore sorting test work has been undertaken in Germany and the United States. HPGR testing has taken place in Europe and also here in the U.S. We anticipate that the amount of material that we reject from the ore sorting process has dropped a little bit. Instead of 10%, it's gone down to about 8% with about a 1.7% gold loss. I would note that the grades of material that's being rejected from the sorting plant is something in the range of 0.1 to 0.15 grams per ton. It's certainly well below the cutoff grade and uneconomic. The process flow sheet is, and I'm just going to change to the flow sheet, is again a very conventional gold recovery circuit.
It has three stages of crushing: a gyratory primary crusher, secondary cones, HPGR, third-stage crushers. Just like our previous study, we have eliminated the laser sorting from the sorting circuit, and we now just have a single X-ray transmission circuit as part of the sorting. Product from the crushing circuit goes to two stages of grinding, a ball mill for the coarse part of the crusher product, and then it goes to a fine grinding circuit where we're currently designed using the Vertimills as the fine grinding. From there, the material goes to a CIL circuit, it's leached with cyanide, gold is recovered on carbon, and ultimately, we produce a doré product, which will be sold to a refinery. In the past, we have upsized much of the equipment.
We believe that we have enough experience today that we've designed the project on a fit-for-purpose basis, allowing us to be more selective with the equipment sizing and also to build the project in a more efficient basis. This is a very, very important change from previous, and we have a great deal of confidence in the work that GR Engineering Services has done in identifying those parts of the process plant where we can optimize not just the flow sheet, but the equipment selection based on these principles. The gold production profile, I'm going to turn some time over to Doug to talk about the production profile and some of the project economics as estimated in the study.
All right. In terms of gold production, what you see on this graph here is the first year of operation is really a nine-month period.
We've got two years of construction and then about a three-month period as they wrap up commissioning before we hit first gold pour. Once we get through that ramp-up period and move into years two through four, the grade there is actually the best grade that we process on a consistent basis through the life of the project. That's a result of using stockpiles to bring the higher-grade material into the processing plant early, and then those stockpiles are processed later in the life of the project. From there, we go into a period where we're averaging right at a gram, and that really runs out through year 18. I think here we've only shown detail on the first 15 years, but we have a very nice consistent profile that delivers a nice cash flow, which you'll see in the next slide.
In terms of all-in sustaining costs, you can see the effect of the higher grades. Obviously, the ramp-up year, you always get hit because you've got your full staff on board, but your production is not quite at full speed. You can see the drop in our all-in sustaining costs as we hit those nice higher-grade materials, and then again, a very steady all-in sustaining cost in that kind of $1,450- $1,500 range through the balance of that period. Now, converting that into what it does to us from a cash flow perspective, we put together a chart here. There's a lot on here to unpack, so I'll give you a little bit of a framework, and then we can talk through it. The gold bars represent annual cash flow at the feasibility study base case of $2,500 gold.
The silver bars represent the incremental cash flow that occurs if you raise the assumption of the gold price from $2,500 up to $3,300. The blue line is the cumulative cash flows at $2,500. The dotted line is the cumulative cash flows at $3,300. Walking through this quickly, the first two years are obviously not affected by gold price because there's no production in those years, but the cumulative cash outflow is the $425 million that we've talked about as the initial capital cost of the project. Year one, you see the ramp-up, and then years two through four, you can see the effect of that higher grade on cash flows. Just as a point, at the end of year three, 2.7 years into the project, we hit payback. After that, the initial capital has been recovered.
Now you can see the balance out through year 18, which represents that stable grade that we talked about on the previous slide. After that, we need to make a couple of investments to continue the extension of the mine life. There are two things that happen when you see the cash flow dip there starting in year 19. First off, we're moving away from TSF1, and we now need to construct TSF2. We've got the initial construction cost in year 19. We also have to do a layback to access the ores that you see or the cash flow that you see in the latter part of this chart. We then get another roughly 10 good years of operation, not quite as stable, but there's some very nice grade ore out there in those later years.
In terms of closure, those numbers look relatively small, which you would think for a project of this scale. There's a reason for that, and that's because in the closure period, one of the first things that we'll be doing is reprocessing the material that's on the heap leach pad that was produced by others in the past. There's about 160,000 ounces that can be produced. They'll produce a cash operating margin on a pre-tax basis of about $88 million. That $88 million, combined then with the final reclamation and closure costs, keep that number at the back end relatively small. Just a little bit on capital costs real quickly. Talk through some of these numbers.
You can see the $425 million is our initial capital, and then we have another $442 million, which is both our sustaining capital and then, of course, our reclamation and closure costs over the life of the project. With regard to mining, I'll just point out that even though we're using contract mining, they'll be providing the fleet and all the things that they need for operation of the fleet in terms of moving the ore to the processing plant. The $22 million is really just limited to facilities that we will provide, and they'll be part of our capital costs exclusive of what the mining contractor delivers. Processing plant, again, that's an area that GR Engineering Services produced. We're very, very pleased with what they came up with, but we also think that it's a very robust number in terms of the type of plant that we've designed.
Project infrastructure, that's just all the other things around the site. We've also got site establishment, which is our camp, and then basically admin buildings and our power distribution. You can see the costs for the management and EPC services. We've also got our pre-production costs included in here. The majority of that $48 million is really our Vista staff ramping up. We'll have some staff, obviously, from the very outset of the project. Beginning in the year before we first produce gold, we'll continually ramp up our staff so that by the time first gold occurs, we've got all of our personnel on site. Finally, to talk about the final major component of the costing structure is our operating costs. Without going through a lot of detail here, you can see what our mining costs are. This is on a contract mining basis.
As Maria discussed, we kick off the first 15 years at $3 a ton on a per mine basis. That obviously goes up later in the mine life as the pit becomes deeper. We've shown the processing costs on a per ton basis, coming to $41, $41.50 for the first 15 years, a little bit lower in the latter half because we've got a little bit lower mining costs once we start simply reprocessing those lower-grade stockpiles in the last three years of the mine life. That all converts on an ounce basis to $1,449 on an all-in sustaining cost basis in the first 15 years, and that goes up just a bit in the latter part of the mine life. In total, we're at $1,499. On this next chart, we've converted all of that into what it means in terms of our NPV and IRR.
Obviously, our base case was the $2,500. We've gone down $400, up $400 from that, and we've actually shown the current spot price on this chart as well. You can see a nice steady increase as we move through the different gold grades. I think what it really emphasizes is, as you look at the base case, those numbers are very solid. When you start thinking about what the project would produce in the current gold price environment, there's tremendous opportunity there to create value from the current gold environment. There's a lot of discussion about where gold prices will go from here, but you can pretty well extend these lines and bars and understand how this looks if you see gold prices move up higher in the coming years and months.
Thanks, Doug. Speaking about increasing value, this next slide gives you an idea of our valuation compared to some of our producer peers in Australia. The chart here shows market caps on the vertical axis, annual gold production across the horizontal axis, and the size of the reserves that are reported by each of the companies is represented by the size of the ball in this chart. What you see is that with the Mt Todd project, even though the reserves have decreased from our previous studies where we had 7 million ounces and we now report 5.2 million ounces, we have a very, very large project with the potential to have a very significant rerating as the project moves into development and production.
We would hope that people can see that at a very minimum, getting to the point that we're valued something like a Bellevue or Catalyst Metals, there would be a tremendous upside opportunity for Vista shareholders. As production is established, the valuation could continue to rise approaching what we see in valuations for Gold Road, Capricorn, and Genesis. We're very excited about the potential that this feasibility study represents. Obviously, we're benefited by current gold price, and that has a lot to do with it. Again, it comes back to having the right size operation with the right strategy for developing the project itself. While not necessarily part of the feasibility study work, nonetheless, important to the project is the water supply and water management. I think it's important for everyone to note that the project already has a freshwater storage reservoir.
You see a picture of it there on the right side of the slide. That reservoir has capacity for 4.7 gigaliters of water or 4.7 million cubic meters of water. This reservoir fills up annually during the wet season at Mt Todd. We have the option to raise the dam, which you see off on the very right side. You see the spillway kind of in the bottom center of the picture, and the dam is over on the right. We have the opportunity, the option to raise the dam in the spillway by 2 meters, which would significantly increase the capacity. Those familiar with the project will know that there are some acid rock drainage point sources on the project, the existing waste rock dump, and we currently manage that.
We plan to construct and operate a water treatment plant during operations to treat acid rock drainage and to be able to discharge clean water. Also, not necessarily part of the feasibility study, but important to the development of the project, we want to note that all of the major environmental and operating permits have been approved for a 50,000-ton per day project. There's been some changes in legislation. Our mining management plan is now referred to as a deemed mining license, and we are in the process of converting those deemed licenses to mining licenses, which is the terminology of the new act. Our environmental impact statement was approved for the larger size, as was our federal environmental authorization. We have additionally Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority certificates, waterway diversion authorizations, as well as the rights or the authorization to use the water in the freshwater storage reservoir.
We believe that while we complete the amendments to align the mining management plan now deemed license with the 2024 feasibility study, other modifications may be required to align our permits with the 15,000-ton per day operation that we've evaluated as part of this feasibility study. We further estimate that it may take 12 to 18 months to complete and obtain the approvals for the smaller-scale project. To summarize the outcomes and the results of this feasibility study, we continue to responsibly advance or are responsibly advancing one of Australia's largest undeveloped gold projects. As I pointed out at the very start, this is designed as an Australian project. We've included a very strong team of Australian engineers and consultants, as well as some with extensive international experience to design the Mt Todd project.
We're very confident that this is the project as designed and reported in this feasibility study will be a project that potential partners, whether that's joint venture or transaction partners, will be able to understand and very quickly get their arms around the design principles and the decisions that have been made in the design of the project. We believe that, again, that we have right-sized the project with the right scope. The combination of size and the fit-for-purpose design have driven a tremendous change in the initial CapEx of the project, and we're very pleased that this is a $425 million initial CapEx, a very competitive capital cost number.
We think that the other changes that have been made with regards to changing the cutoff grade, having the luxury of being able to raise the cutoff grade, place some of that low-grade material in the waste rock dump, and focus on the better part of the deposit allows us to say that truly grade pays and tons cost. By prioritizing grade, we have been able to achieve a reserve grade that's very close to a gram per ton, which in turn drives steady gold production over nearly the entire life of the project. We're very pleased that the project continues to demonstrate sustained leverage to the gold price. We would be among the first to acknowledge that the gold prices that were used in the previous studies, that the CapEx and the NPV and IRR were not as attractive as they are today.
Today, we're very pleased to be able to report an after-tax NPV (5%) at the study price of $2,500 of $1.1 billion. That's roughly two and a half times the initial CapEx of the project, the capital efficiency of slightly under $100 per ounce. This represents a tremendous amount of work, and we're very pleased with the results. Again, highlighting what is the project, what would be the project economics at spot price, $2.2 billion NPV (5%) on an after-tax basis and an IRR of 44.7%. I highlight that we did not specifically address expansion opportunities, but we have prepared the layout of the plant to allow for the expansion of the plant. Whether that would take place at a 50% expansion, a doubling of the throughput, there are decisions that we feel will best be made in the future.
We've not tried to account for those in the design of the primary crusher or any other aspects of the plant. We have designed a fit-for-purpose process plant with the idea that the project will be built, it will establish itself as an economic gold producer, and based on market conditions, decisions about expansion will be made at a future time. This study certainly opens the door to various development alternatives. We will be very busy in the next 8 to 12 weeks helping many, many different potential partners and investors understand the opportunity that this represents, whether that ends up taking the form of a joint venture.
At a smaller scale and smaller CapEx, there's more companies that could be potential partners, or whether we move down the path of a transaction involving either the asset itself or the corporation, or whether we decide to, with the market's general support and the support of our shareholders, build the team and ultimately develop Mt Todd on a standalone basis owned and operated by Vista Gold. All of these are options that are available to us at this point, and the next six months will be very important in determining what that ultimate path is. I'd like to leave and close with the point that our focus and what's a priority for us is determining the best pathway for project development and value realization. That will ultimately guide and direct the decisions that we make as a board as to how we advance the Mt Todd project.
With that as an overview and in some cases, a bit of a detailed look at the results of the feasibility study, we'd like to open the call up for questions from those who are on the call and have, in many instances, been following Vista Gold for quite some time.
Thank you. It looks like our first question comes from Heiko Ihle with Vista Gold. Please go ahead.
Hey, Fred. Hey, Fred and team. I hope you can hear me okay.
We can.
Awesome. Obviously, the CapEx is now down 59%, $425 million in a pretty inflationary environment. Things are smaller, but maybe if you would like to provide some color on the key components of the stock fund. You mentioned a third-party power generation, and we talked about contract mining earlier on this call. Besides that, any big ticket items you'd like to go ahead and throw out?
Heiko, you broke up a little bit. Can you just repeat the question from the point of can we highlight? I think you're asking, can we highlight some of the details and major components of the initial capital? Is that correct?
Yeah, there's been an echo throughout this call. I assumed it was on your end. Maybe it's on mine. Perfect. There's been some, obviously, this whole thing is a little bit smaller now. Your CapEx is down 59%. Maybe just go through some of the key components for the decreased CapEx besides the third-party power generation and obviously the contract mining that you had discussed earlier on this call.
Yeah, certainly. I'll invite Doug to chime in as well. You've obviously identified two. I note that the power generation, we'd used a third-party power generator in the previous study as well. The contract mining has certainly reduced our initial capital costs. There's been a significant reduction in initial capital resulting from the change in size as we've dropped from 50,000 tons a day down to 15,000 tons per day. There's a couple of things that play into that. One is just the equipment selection itself. With smaller crushers, smaller ball mills, fewer verti mills, fewer pieces of equipment in the ore sorting circuit, all of that contributes to lower capital costs. The weights of material that we have to transport, there's just a number of factors.
The change in the design philosophy from being basically a very robust N plus one philosophy to fit-for-purpose design has also allowed us to achieve certain economies in the capital costs. For example, the previous design with the very large crushing plant, we had incorporated a significant amount of concrete, some foundations, pillars. Crushers were set up on concrete. There was a lot of concrete work that went into the previous design. Now, with smaller equipment not needing the same heights, the same clearances, we've been able to do things like a big part of the crushing circuit will be mounted on structural steel. We won't have a lot of concrete sticking up above the ground. We've used gabion construction for the retaining walls instead of massive concrete retaining walls.
Another area of savings is on the tailing storage facility and some of the work that needs to be done there. On sustaining cost, the new tailing storage facility won't be built until year 19, whereas previously, construction started in the second or third year of the operation. There's been a number of areas like that where we've achieved capital savings that are related to the size of the project. One area that's perhaps gone a little bit the other way, and ultimately, we think it's the right decision, but we will now have a permanent camp. That was not something that was contemplated in the previous study. There's going to be a small amount of money that's spent up front. Some of the support facilities, the water treatment plant is not the same size as what we saw in the previous study. It's been reduced.
Going to a smaller scale, adopting fit-for-purpose design principles have resulted in some very significant contributions to this reduction in CapEx cycle.
Perfect. Just for a frame of reference, in your release, you state that you'll segregate the 0.35 to 0.5 gram material with the things that do have economic potential. Just out of curiosity, how much work do you think this will add through incremental assaying of what exactly you got, additional truck tours to haul stuff to a separate area? I mean, I don't need a real answer. I just, like, scientifically, how much approximately are we looking at? Is this even any extra? I mean, it's definitely an extra effort, I would assume. How meaningful, measurable is it?
You know, Heiko, the material's got to come out of the mine anyway. It's really a matter of, does it go to a stockpile or does it go to a specific part of the waste rock dump? Ultimately, I don't believe that it's going to drive any real significant additional effort. All of the blast holes will be assayed. There won't be any difference in that regard. We'll be assaying every blast hole to determine ore and waste boundaries. It will simply come into play as we define the boundaries of where dig lines are in the operation and ultimately where trucks go to as they leave the pit. This is segregating it will create a little bit more extra work for Mining Plus. We've always known that scheduling the waste rock dump takes more effort than scheduling the pit.
It's a very dynamic and detailed exercise as we try to balance material movement and make sure that reclamation is able to keep up with the mining and placement of material in the waste rock dump. I don't think that it adds significantly or materially to the complexity of the operation in the pit itself or to operating costs, Heiko.
Okay. Fair enough. I just never really modeled anything like this out. I guess if you were in my shoes, you would just essentially leave it off the model.
Yeah, exactly. If it's going to be treated as waste, then it's an opportunity for the future of the mine. If you get to the end of the life of the mine or you get to the point that you're starting to think about reprocessing the heap leach pad and there's this other material there, you may make a decision to process the material that's stockpiled in the dump before you process the heap leach pad.
Perfect. I'll get back in queue. Thanks so much.
We find no economic benefits to that material at the present time.
Okay. Perfect. I'll get back in queue. Thank you.
Thank you, Heiko. Our next question comes from Adrian Day with Adrian Day Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. How are you, Fred? Let's see. I've got four questions. Maybe I'll follow Heiko's lead in those two and then get back in the queue. I think I know the answer to this one, but you talked about the expansion and you haven't designed this. You haven't designed this to allow for ready expansion. My question is, will any of the ore be sterilized under this plan?
No.
Okay. No, I thought not.
Adrian, you know, just to be perfectly honest here, you're aware that previously we reported a 7 million ounce reserve, and now we're reporting a 5.3 million ounce reserve. By using a higher cutoff, and using different costs, the combination of the cutoff grade and the costs that we're using as part of this study, the pit is not the same size. It's not the same pit as what we had previously. There's, you can't say that they're an apples-to-apples comparison on a pit-to-pit basis. We made the conscious decision that we felt that 5 million ounces at a gram per ton would be much more highly valued than 7 million ounces at 0.77. There is some ore in the bottom of the pit that is not mined in this evaluation that was mined in the previous.
While we say, no, we haven't sterilized any ore, please bear in mind that the mine plans, the mine shapes are different, and we've had some additions to the pit in the form of succession drilling in 2024 on the south crossroad. There's been some additions and some subtractions, but the mine plans are not the same.
Okay. My other question, if I may, when I think it was at the end of 2023 that you first announced you were going to do this feasibility study, and at that point, you were estimating a CapEx of under $400 million. I'm just wondering if there are any major differences that account for the cost increase. I mean, the Australian dollar is about the same. Is it just general inflation or are there specific things?
Yeah, Adrian, hi, it's Doug. A couple of things. Obviously, inflation, although it has slowed down, it's not as big a factor as it was in 2022. The other thing is, when we moved in the prior studies, and including what you're speaking to of a smaller case, we anticipated a largely community-based program. We didn't need a full-time, we didn't need a camp. Putting the camp in here, I think the number's about $30 million. That's a 250-bed camp. It's the commissary facilities, and it's obviously the rec center, all the things that go with modern-day camp. That's probably the single biggest addition to what we didn't have previously. I'd say other things that maybe have contributed would be a little bit more robust in terms of costing of our staffing ramp-ups and some things like that. The camp's probably the biggest one.
Okay. Okay. That's helpful. I'll jump back in the queue and come back in afterwards.
Okay. Thanks, Adrian.
Thank you.
Thank you, Adrian. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one. The next question comes from Daniel McConvey with Rossport Investments. Please go ahead.
Earnest, Doug , Pamela , and Maria . A couple of questions. Just on the camp, just the 250 beds, is that what will be the maximum number of people at site during peak construction? Is that how do you fit that in?
The 250 beds is the permanent camp, but we also have a construction camp. The construction camp is already accounted for in the 425, and it will be commissioned within the first six months of operation.
Okay. How much is that? That is in the line item for—I'm just—it doesn't show as a line item, but that is not a major cost, Maria.
Exactly. Exactly. It's accounted for in the site establishment of activities. There you have as well the construction camp that has 200 beds. Basically, between the construction camp and the permanent camp, the last six months of construction and the first six months of production, if you will, you have over 400 beds.
Okay. Your peak is not you downsize the size of the construction, but what will be the peak number of people at the site during it? It'll be like 500 or so?
No. We are looking at a peak of 420, and this is after year 19. Fred and Doug mentioned this is where we are doing a layback of the piece. We have to bring more people, and this only lasts for two years. The average number of people is around 380 at site at those times.
Okay, during the construction, will it be a similar number, 500 or so?
Similar number. $430 million, I think it is for construction.
430 at the peak. Okay. Okay. Thanks. Power costs. What are you estimating for your power costs? I know that you're going through an independent power producer. Your estimated kilowatt-hour cost would be roughly what?
0.133 kilowatts per hour.
Okay, so $13.
Australian dollar.
$13 per KW.
Yeah, that's per kilowatt. Sorry.
$0.13 Australian per kilowatt-hour, Dan.
Okay. Great. Okay. Thanks. Last question, just with the high-pressure grinding mill, is there any redundancy built into that? I understand, you know, these mills are very effective for hard rock, but they tend to, the availability has not been perfect in these. Has that been factored in at all?
The availability of the HPGR crushers has been factored into the availability of the total crushing circuit, Dan. We have a stockpile in the design.
Right. Okay, great. Thanks very much.
Thank you.
Thank you, Daniel. The next question comes from Brendan Hayes with Ragged Mountain Capital. Please go ahead.
Brendan, it's three. Can you hear me?
We can.
Perfect. Three questions, if I may. In the universe of Australian mines, not yet in production, where does Mt Todd stack up?
In what sense are you asking the question? How do we stack up? Size or reserve base or what? Help me understand your question just a little bit more.
Really, really both, Fred. You know, the overall opportunity size, reserve base, and kind of production ounce potential.
Yeah. Obviously, the biggest project in Australia today that's contemplated is De Grey's—well, now it's Northern Star, they merged—the HEMI project. That project is roughly 11 million ounces of total resource. They're probably in the 7 to 8 million ounce reserve range. That's the largest project that's out there. They're, De Grey's, planning, contemplated, building it, and immediately starting to expand it within the first several years. That's the biggest project that's out there. We're within a couple of million ounces of reserves compared to that development project. I don't know. Maria, is there any others that you would add? Obviously, we know that Capricorn Metals is advancing two things. One is the development of their Mount Gibson project. The other is an expansion of Carlawinda.
Okay. Thanks. That's good context. My second one was in the early years of the project, if I, from the slides that Doug walked through, if I heard you all right, you expect the project would generate at $2,500 gold prices over $150 million in cash flow per year. That puts you all today, your market cap at less than one times that potential cash flow generation. Do I have that right?
That would be correct. For those first three years, our stabilized cash flow is closer to $100 million, between $80 million and $100 million. That is correct.
Okay. My last one is kind of coming back to the expansion opportunities and maybe framing that a bit more. If we fast-forward five years and Mt Todd is operating, Fred, what advice do you give to the operator of the project at that time? Are you advising them to conduct more exploration drilling? Are you starting to think about some of the ounces that you left behind in the feasibility study? Where's the go-forward opportunity then? What approach might you advise an operator to take?
Answer, Brendan, is yes. All of the above. As soon as the project starts to free cash flow, I think that there will be a certain amount of the money after paying off debt that will be dedicated to exploration. I would suggest that within the first year or two, that we'll be beginning to evaluate, at least on a desktop basis, what an expansion scenario might look like, both with regards to size and timing. Maria and the Mining Plus team have just done a phenomenal job to optimize the mine schedule to give us the best production in the first three years of the project after ramp-up and commissioning, and then a very stable production profile after that. There could be a change in thinking in that regard if there was an expansion that was contemplated.
Obviously, the advantages of the expansion would be the economies of scale that would be realized would allow us to drop the cutoff grade. There would be more ounces being produced. There are a number of things that would come into play. I think that once the project is up, running, producing gold at expected levels, there will be a number of different activities going on looking at how do we further optimize and ultimately expand the Mt Todd project. That will include exploration close to the Batman deposit. It will include exploration that's been deferred on the exploration licenses. I think that it'll be an exciting period of time.
Great. Thank you, guys. Best of luck.
Thank you.
Thank you, Brendan. The last question comes from Adrian Day with Adrian Day Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Hi. I've got two questions, as I said. The first one, if I may, what is your cash balance and what is the budget, let's say, for the rest of the year, the burn rate, and then any other programs that you have for the balance of the year?
Yeah. Hi, Adrian. It's Doug again. Our cash balance, you could project out from our last published number, which was March 31. Just the typical straight line that Vista has, it'll be about $12 million as we get to June 30. Our overall run rate is really about the same. It kind of looks like $6 million a year in terms of run rate.
Okay, not really going down. Now you publish this, just about the same.
Yeah. It comes after the study's done. We're still, obviously, we have work to do to get the final documents published. It'll come back. The $6 million is our historic run rate. Okay, and that really hasn't changed.
Okay.
It's $1.5 million a quarter, yep.
Okay. I assume no advance on selling the mill?
No, we sold a few pieces, but there's been no additional activity on that old mill that we have.
Okay. That's really the last sort of other asset that you have to sell. Is that, there's no other, or am I missing something? There's no other joint ventures or royalties or partnerships or physical equipment?
No.
Okay. My last question, if I may, I'm just wondering, you know, when you first had the process with CIBC, part of, gosh, I don't want to say lack of interest. I don't mean that. Part of the issue, if you like, was the gold price and the lack of M&A. Obviously, in the last, is it three years, we've had a higher gold price and we've had more M&A. My question would be, I mean, A, is CIBC still, you know, an advisor? Has the increase in the gold price and the increase in M&A led to any more interest or is everyone just waiting for this feasibility?
Yeah. CIBC continues to be an advisor, first of all. Second of all, there has been kind of renewed interest since the first of the year when we announced that we were undertaking this new feasibility study. We have signed a number of confidentiality agreements in the last six weeks. We expect that there will be other confidentiality agreements that are signed in the coming weeks. Doug and I are leaving Friday night to travel to Australia for Diggers and Dealers. We expect to be talking to a number of the Australian gold producers about Mt Todd. You raised the issue about an increase in M&A. Certainly, if we look at M&A as a big bucket, we would agree. When we look at the amount of M&A involving development stage projects, it's actually been quite modest.
Most of the M&A activity has been producers acquiring other producers at all different levels through the production profile. That's something that we really hadn't anticipated. As I've talked to others, that's been a little bit of a surprising outcome as the gold price has risen, that there's been a very strong preference toward consolidation amongst producers and not much interest in developers. It's our opinion, our belief that that can't go on indefinitely. At some point, there's got to be a bit more of a shift in focus to the producers starting to look at worthwhile projects in the development space. Not all projects will be considered, but we've designed Mt Todd, and I think that we have the jurisdiction permitting status. Now the size and the capital cost structure where we become, we've become very relevant and very, very competitive in that arena.
Yeah. No, good point about developers. Okay. That's good. Good luck at Diggers and Dealers.
Diggers and Dealers.
Yeah, that's the one.
A fine Australian institution.
Yeah.
Thanks, Adrian.
Okay, thank you. Bye.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Fred Earnest for closing remarks. Please continue.
Thank you, Natasha. We really appreciate everyone's interest today. The questions that have been asked have been excellent. I close with the following thought. We have been advancing and working on Mt Todd for a considerable period of time. We've done an extensive amount of work to understand the deposit, the geology, the metallurgy. With this study, we have embarked on what we believe is a very significant paradigm shift in developing the project. The decision to raise the cutoff grade has increased the grade of reserves. We think that that's a very, very important decision. Resizing and right-sizing the project has allowed us to achieve a tremendous reduction in the initial capital of the project.
The work that's been done by a very dedicated, experienced, well-qualified group of engineers and consultants, firms that have just tremendous track records in advancing, evaluating, designing, and ultimately building projects in Western Australia has given us great confidence in the results of the feasibility study. I'm very pleased that we're now at a point where we're able to discuss a project with an initial CapEx that we believe is achievable, both from a realistic being able to build it for that price point of view, but also from a perspective of being able to finance that number. We're very pleased with the economic results.
The after-tax NPV (5%) of $1.1 billion at a $2,500 gold price and double that at the spot with IRRs of 27.8% and 44.8% or 7% respectively, I think, speak very powerfully to the economics of the project and the sustained leverage to the price of gold that we enjoy at Mt Todd. We're very excited about the development opportunities and the potential. We look forward to the next 6 to 8 weeks or 12 weeks and the work that we're going to be doing to broadly raise awareness of the Mt Todd project. This is an exciting period of time. We have a strong gold price. We're very, very optimistic about the interest that's already been shown in the project. We hope to generate more and be able to make a decision ultimately that will create and realize the most value for Vista shareholders.
We've not talked a lot about all-in sustaining costs, but our all-in sustaining cost, I think, is another. It's a very defendable number. It's not at the low end of the curve. It's not at the high end. At $1,450 roughly an ounce, this provides an exceptional amount of opportunity for margin and profitability. I think that that's shown in the economic results that we reported today. I'd just like to close with an expression of gratitude and acknowledgment of the considerable efforts of Maria, Doug, and Glen on our team and all of the consultants that worked on this. They've done an incredible amount of work. I believe it's been very good work, high-quality work. It's not a lot of times where you can embark on a feasibility study and seven and a half months later deliver results. I think they've done a tremendous job.
We look forward to communicating and spreading the word, the results of this feasibility study. We'll be attending, as we indicated, Diggers and Dealers in Australia. We'll be at the Precious Metals Conference in Beaver Creek, the Gold Forum Americas in Colorado Springs in September. We'll be participating in a number of different interviews, podcasts, and other forums to publicize the work. We invite questions. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out directly to Pamela Solly. If Pam can't answer it, she will get the right people on the phone call to answer your questions. We think that this represents a turning point in the valuation of Vista Gold. We're excited to be able to deliver these results and embark on a journey that we think will create greater value for our shareholders.
With that, I thank all of you for your time, and we wish you all a very pleasant day.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.