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TRX Gold Corporation
1/21/2025
It is now my pleasure to introduce Ms. Christina Lawley, Vice President, Investor Relations with TRX Gold. Christina, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Chuck. Welcome, everyone, to the TRX Gold Corporation first quarter 2025 results presentation. With us today is our Chief Executive Officer, Stephen Maloney, Chief Operating Officer, Michael Leonard, and newly joined Chief Operating Officer, Richard Bofie. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the meeting is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If you wish to ask a question, please click the Q&A icon on the left-hand side of the screen. You will see the options to raise your hand to join the queue and ask your question verbally or write a question to submit your question in writing. Analysts who have dialed into the conference call may press star then one on your telephone keypad to join the question queue. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Stephen Maloney, CEO. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you, Christina, and welcome everybody to the Q1 2025 conference call for TRX Gold. First and foremost, I'd like to introduce our new Chief Operating Officer, Richard Boffey. Richard, why don't you just give a quick introduction to yourself? You're at Buck Reef today, and you're in one of the rooms where our technical services team usually resides.
Thanks, Stephen. Good morning, everybody. Yep. Glad to be on the call. Happy to be starting now with TRX Goal and to get my hands dirty out at Buck Reef. It's a wonderful resource and it's very early days here, but this place has got a great potential and I very much look forward to taking Buck Reef to become a significant operating gold mine in Tanzania.
Excellent. Thank you, Richard. It's good to have you on board. And I know on behalf of the executive team, we're very excited on the board to have you on board. So glad you're enjoying Tanzania today. It's much warmer in Tanzania, I'm sure, than it is here in Toronto today. We're dealing with minus 15 degrees Celsius, so we're quite cold. And for our U.S. investors, that is probably minus 40, quite cold. So without further ado, Christina, can you forward to slide number three, please? Ah, there we go. So what I would like to focus on is on our prior calls, we've always focused on what we've done in the past. What I'd like to focus on is what we did in Q1 2025. And what does that really mean? So in Q1 2025, as we in our press release indicated, we had a lower grade profile than we had in Q1 2024. So what that did is a lower grade profile means there's less gold going to the mill. And that's normal. in a single asset mining company where you'll go through periods of lower grade profile, higher strip ratio, and then get into periods of higher grade profile, lower strip ratio over time. The gold is where the gold is. You can't influence it. You have the influence in the way you go about mining it. And a mine plan is set up to maximize net present value over the short, medium, and long term. But in that lower, grade profile that we had in Q1. The takeaways that I take away from that is the expanded plant has come online, has reduced cost per ton, particularly in the operating cost basis by over half. We are still, even at a lower grade profile and a lower recovery rate, which goes hand in hand, given the metallurgy of the buckberry four, we're still a very low cost asset. So what does that really mean? It means as we continually explore and find more and more resources, Buck Reef will be more and more profitable. So we can find higher grade resources and bring them into the mine plant, such as what we have looking at at Stanford Bridge, what we've had at Anfield, and put the drill bit in and expand those over time. More than likely, those are going to come in and be even lower cost than what we processed in Q1 2025. Our grade profile in Q1 2025 was below the average grade of the deposit at about 1.25 grams a ton versus 2.5 grams a ton in Q1 2024. So what we've proven out in Q1 2025 is that this is a low cost asset. And with that, where the focus needs to be now on expanding the resource and expanding the production profile over time. As more and more resources come into the mineable resource category, that means we can continually expand processing. But there's a balance between what's available from a mining perspective and the processing capacity size and bringing on those new exploration resources over time. And the balance in that is our current business plan, is to take cash flow from operations, which is very healthy, again, in Q1, given where the goal price was, given the lower operating costs, and continually reinvest it into our business, continue to grow. I'll pause there. Mike, any comments that I missed out there from a high-level overarching business proposition perspective?
No, that was really it, Stephen. I mean, just to reiterate, we've been talking about this for some time now, but we've been explaining that this is a scalable operation. whereby we can grow the business without adding a whole heck of a lot of additional overhead. And Q1 was really the first full quarter operating the 2,000 ton a day plant at capacity. And consequently, to your earlier point, we saw a real benefit in operating costs, particularly processing costs per ton, which has come down by over half. And again, reinforces the fact that this is a low cost, high margin operation.
Exactly. So next slide, please, Christina. So again, the business plan remains intact. It's been proven out even further in the fact that we can do this even at a lower grade and lower recovery rate and continually move the football down the field, as we would like to say in America or where Richard's from in New Zealand, put runs on the board. And so the continued business plan is to continue the expansion over time. We're in current planning phases for that now. and to continue to have a drill pit in the ground for further exploration and growing that resource to bring into the business plan over time. Next slide, Christina. So with regards to what Q1 looked like, we had equivalent production as Q1 2025 with half the grade, We had an increase in adjusted EBITDA and cash flow from operations because the cost profile was lower, as well as the increase in gold price from Q1 2024 enabled us to have higher adjusted EBITDA and higher cash flow from operations than we did in the prior years. So the financial metrics are still very, very healthy. We have now gotten up to over two times investment into the Buck Reef asset from the capital raises that were done well over three years ago now. And so the business plan, although slow at times and it feels slow to us at times, has been proven out and it is prudent capital management minimizing shareholder dilution to this point in time. And we'll continue to expand the operations as well as the exploration drill bit. As I mentioned right now, the investment is going into the stripping campaign that's necessary to open up the further parts of the ore body that has a higher head grade. That will produce more cash flow. Because of the higher head grade, as we get through the stripping campaign, which will then be continually reinvested into the asset, particularly around exploration. Christina? So as I mentioned, we are capturing the record high gold prices by keeping a focus on cost. We can control costs, particularly on a per ton basis, and we've done very well on that. As we mentioned, the variable costs and operating has decreased in the processing plant. We are also tackling the operating costs on a mining perspective that's lagging a little bit further than the processing, which we focused on first with the expanded plant. Mining costs will continue to come down as well as we utilize some of our owner mine fleet. That fleet right now is being utilized expand what I'll call infrastructure, which is daily facility and other types of facilities in background noise. Excuse me. I think that's our service provider for this call. I'm muted right now. So Galen, if you could please mute, that'd be greatly appreciated. So we're utilizing that owner mining fleet to build the infrastructure around Buckbeak. We've also bought in a parts of the fleet to replace processing equipment, so loaders and things like that. So that has had an impact on the operating cost. And that was coming in towards the end of the quarter. So we didn't have that fleet on site during the quarter. So those cost reductions of having our own fleet in the processing plant, such as loaders, haven't been fully reflected yet into those costs. So we are benefiting from goal prices. We are keeping a focus on cost. Production is in line with the mine plan and expectations, given the great profile where we are. We are benefiting from the economies of scale, the asset, and we are continuing to have some good drill hole and exploration success, particularly around Stamford Bridge, which has brought us record drill hole results at Buck Reef. It is adjacent to the main zone and is in between the main zone as well as the eastern porphyry and field trend. So one of the next steps for us there, and we'll get into this in a second, is to do a geophysical survey on the property to try to determine if there are any similar trends like Stamford Bridge between the main zone and the Anfield and eastern porphyry zones, which wouldn't be abnormal in this type of deposit once you find one of these sinks. Next slide, please. Again, it's the same. This... This slide is the same as a prior one. You'll see some pictures of our newly expanded plant. Again, these things, this plant has been able to bring in lower costs and that's the focus. Buckreef is a low cost asset, even at lower grade and at a lower recovery rate profile. Next slide, please. Mike, you want to present this slide, please?
Yeah, thanks, Stephen, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us here today. I'll be maybe a little bit repetitive with some of what Stephen's already had to say, but I think it's important to reiterate just so people understand some of the key drivers of the quarterly financial results. Just to recap, we did indicate this with our year-end MD&A. We scheduled a strip campaign over the first half of this year where the mine schedule had us mining a higher proportion of waste tons with the goal of accessing higher grade ore blocks in the second half of the year. As Stephen touched on, we're on schedule and on sequence. But as you will have seen, as you work through this strip campaign and as you move a higher proportion of waste rock, inevitably you realize a lower average head grade. And in our case, as we get through the harder rock, a slightly lower recovery, again, because of that higher proportion of waste rock. But the good news, and Stephen touched on this, the good news is the expanded plant did exactly what it was supposed to do. We increased our throughput by over 100% year over year. We're up to over 1,700 tons per day. So it's operating at nameplate capacity with scheduled maintenance and downtime. And that increased throughput offset that lower grade and recovery. And consequently, as Stephen touched on, our production was effectively flat year over year. However, we did benefit from these lofty record gold prices. We realized $2,653 an ounce as our realized price in the quarter. That was $700 an ounce higher than last year. And consequently, it led to year-over-year growth in key financial metrics like revenue, gross profit, and EBITDA. So, you know, this really demonstrates, as we touched on a little bit earlier, the significant leverage that Buckreef has to the gold price, and it's coming through our financial results accordingly. Additionally, and we touched on this at the outset of the presentation, we had spoken about how this operation is scalable. We did say there's very little overhead that we end up having to add to grow this asset. We did bring the 2,000 ton a day plant operation online at the back end of Q4 of last year. And the idea that we discussed in our press release is that we would benefit from economies of scale. We did demonstrate that we were able to do this firsthand in Q1. This was the first full quarter of operating that plant at 2,000 ton a day capacity. And consequently, the variable cost per ton have improved and benefited greatly as a result. The 100 plus percent increase in throughput coupled with very little additional overhead led to 111% decrease in processing cost per ton. Processing cost per ton came in at $12.60. That's well below international averages and certainly well down from where we were this time last year. Similarly, Stephen touched on this as well, but mining costs has come down. And as we start to use this equipment more regularly and help supporting things like plant feed and site development operations and projects, we expect to see costs come down there as well. As far as guidance, we continue to reinforce the fact that we expect gold production to be higher this year than last. And that's a function of the higher throughput capacity of the expanded processing plant. and do also expect cash costs to be in line with last year's levels. As we work through the strip campaign and get to that higher grade or blocks in the second half of the year, we expect to quantitatively guide to both production and costs, which we expect will come through in our Q2 release. Stephen, back to you.
Yeah, thank you, Mike. So with regards to expiration, Christina, next slide, please. So we do need to get... you know, further exploration around this property. What we're seeing is very good, very good results, particularly Stanford Bridge. Let's not forget Anfield, which we discovered in the last 18 months as well. Stanford Bridge is returning the highest grades that we've had. We do need to still do a lot of work on that to bring that into a mine plant. And we do need to have our drill hole spacing to the appropriate widths around 25 meters to get it into the indicated category, and we have to figure out what's the best way to go mine this, whether it will be open pit, underground or a combination of both. But the good news is it's adjacent to the pit. That's how it was discovered because it intersected the pit and it will come into mineable resources over time. Anfield does need to be drilled out as well and to bring that into mineable resources. So there's a lot of money to be spent here on exploration. Right now, we're focused on getting the cash flow from operations up after the stripping campaign, and then we'll come back to the market with what we expect to be doing on a drill hole campaign and how many meters we expect to put into those areas. So the good news is The drill hole results are really good on exploration. I'm really excited for it. It will come into mine plans over time. There is a focus on mineable ounces in our exploration program. But let's also not forget the main zone. The main zone is still open at the south, still open at the northeast. There's just a lot of potential here around Buck Creek to bring this into reserves and resources over time to continually expand the asset. Next slide, Christina. As I mentioned around Stanford Bridge, look, anytime you get 250 plus gram ton meters, they're great drill holes. We got that in one hole. We got 200 on the other holes. These are really, really good results. Really, really excited for what's going to be here. And that's the nature of these type of properties. There's lots of gold around it and you have to get out and explore and find it and continually go. Now, Stanford Bridge is a... As you can see, there's a little bit of a trend here. We have a lot of soccer fans from a U.S. perspective or football fans from a European perspective or the rest of the world perspective on site. They do like their English Premier League stadiums, and that is a trend that we had. We had Anfield. I think, Richard, you're a Liverpool fan, right?
Yeah, you made me come off speaking for that. That's correct.
That's correct, yeah. Unfortunately, Stamford Bridge is Chelsea, right?
Yeah, but it's a good stadium.
It's a good stadium, exactly. So you get the sense that we do like to involve the local staff in the naming of these zones, and they're quite excited by it. So I don't know what will be next, but certainly when we find a new zone, I'm sure there's going to be a very good debate on what we name it. You may not like it, Richard, and the other guys may not like it either. I do have some names in mind.
I'm not a geologist, Stephen. These things are not too much of a problem for me.
Exactly. So we look forward to more drill hole results as we go forward. So again, we are utilizing the cash flow from operations to continually fund growth. I won't go over that. We do have robust CSR plans. We haven't talked about that here. We continually invest in the schools and the health facilities in the region. That is very much welcomed. And we'll continue to upgrade the infrastructure in the region. One of the things that we have focused on too with our new owner mining equipment on site is The maintenance of the road is much better than it was before, and that is also very much appreciated by the locals in the community. Next slide, please. Capital structure. Again, we did, I believe, in December, we're looking at what has happened to our share price. We have hired in the past people to look at short sellers and things like that, similar people that other companies have have hired, we also have, I believe, and we'll look at this analysis in January, quite a bit of tax loss selling in the December period as well. And we're starting to see a little bit of a recovery from that. But what I can say is, fundamentally, the business is still sound, as I mentioned to shareholders. Our goal is to build a business up approach. in providing the fundamental valuation from the asset to be reflected over time in the market and through market participants versus attempting to drive a share price at the top without having the fundamental asset value underneath. And so we'll continue to have that sort of business philosophy. I don't see that changing in the short to medium term or long term. And now I'll open it up for questions.
Thank you, Stephen. If you wish to ask a question, please click the Q&A icon on the left-hand side of your screen. You will see the options Raise Your Hand to join the queue and ask your question verbally, or Write a Question to submit your question in writing. When you are introduced, you may see a prompt on screen asking you to click to continue. You will be live in the call and may speak as soon as you are announced. Analysts who have dialed into the conference call, please press star then one on your telephone keypad to join the question queue. And we'll pause for a moment as participants join the queue. Our first question will come from Heiko Eley with AT Wainwright. Please go ahead.
Hey there. Thanks for taking my questions and welcome to Richard. I think you handled getting put on the spot with soccer trivia quite well. I'm a Bundesliga fan, so anyways. I go to Germany, it's Bundesliga, yeah. There were relations on some pretty nice drilling that you guys said that should keep the site going for a long time too. Looking at some of the historical head grades, obviously the 1.29 grams per ton we had in the quarter was a bit lower. I assume that pendulum is going to swing back in the near term and for the rest of the calendar year as well, and fiscal year. But that said, the recovery rate declined quite meaningfully, and obviously this was due to the lower grade ore, the stripping. But then the release, you also said it's going to get better in the second half of 2025. So just to confirm, is there going to be any impact at all this quarter, and if so, how much? Just trying to work on our model, please.
Yeah, so on Q2, the head grade is going to be lower, probably a little bit slightly lower than what we had in Q1 is where it's coming in. Recovery rates will be, I don't have, I suspect slightly higher. What you have in recovery rates, Heiko, is we do have powder gold. So the finer you grind it, the higher the recovery rate you usually get. And we also have consistent tail grades. So no matter what your head grade is, your tails grades are going to be within a certain range. So the team right now on the medium, or I should even say short to medium and long term, are looking at, And I mentioned this before, operational efficiencies around the plant. So it's great, the plant has 2000 tons per day, but it does need to be upgraded to get those higher recovery rates. And what the team will be looking at over time is putting in a SAGD ball mill on the front they get a, and then going through the ball mills, which should hopefully increase throughput over time, and as well as having a flotation and a regrind. So you will look at a press release that we had around met study, the first met study that had that sort of flow sheet, and that increased the recovery rate significantly because you get a much higher grind size. So you're moving from, 80 micron, sorry, 75 microns passing 80, which we have today, or 80%, down into around the 40 to 50 microns passing the same percentage. You expose more gold to the cyanide, you get a higher recovery rate. So that's being worked on over time. So that will have a good impact on cash costs. and even operating cost per ounce. So that will be the focus over time as we continue to look at operational efficiencies. And I ask Richard, you're knees deep into this. Is there anything to add to that?
Not particularly. There's always a trade-off between how much we can put through the mill and how fine we get it. So there's always a continual... Optimization process going on at an operational level. But the big drivers are to, what will really drive recovery up is to put a flotation circuit in, correspond that with a finer regrind circuit for that concentrate, and then it exposes that to good cyanide levels and you'll see recoveries coming up well into the 90s. So that's the big win out of a flotation circuit.
Correct. And so with regards to head grades, Michael, the head grades are anticipated to improve quite dramatically in Q3 and Q4 of this year as we move through the strip campaign and get to the southern parts of our pit. These higher grades are in around the old workings that... that were on the property from the underground mining days back in the late, I believe late 80s, early 90s. And it's no accident that they went to that part of the deposit first in the main zone, given the grades that are there. It does require some maneuvering around from a safety perspective because there are some underground voids there. And we're managing that now and investigating how best to do that.
Fair enough, fair enough. Moving on from all that, that's actually a very comprehensive answer, and I appreciate it. It's now been four months since the official commissioning of your client back in September. I mean, given the recency of all of that, are there still any quantifiable improvements that you're seeing on, say, on a week-by-week basis right now? You've hinted at some things in your prepared remarks earlier, but I mean, maybe just some granularity you can provide the analysts and investor community, please.
Yeah, so some of the things, so the crushing circuit is now up and running at full capacity. And so there have been some tweaks to that on screen size, on shaker decks, as well as, you know, making sure that we get the liners on time and what liners to order. And part of what I mean there is, we now have an understanding how quickly liners wear out, those sort of things. So those operational sort of efficiencies are now in a crushing circuit. On the milling circuit, what I would say is the three small ball mills were currently, what I'll say is doing a major refurbishment on the last one. So we did two of them in December and we're now doing another one here in January. I think we're about two thirds of the way through that. It should be online in the next couple of days again. And so that is necessary in order to maintain the equipment to make sure that we have the throughput over time. Now's the time to do it when you have a lower grade profile. I prefer to have a higher grade going through it when it's a three-fourth that I wanna take them down when we get to that higher grade. So that's being done. So processing will be slightly down in the Q2 as a result of that. We now have a genset that just arrived over the last couple of days that enables the much larger thousand per ton per day ball mill to be online all the time. So when power goes down, we do our current electricity setup with the gensets, puts that down for a short period of time. So now that has been rectified. We're also... in process of putting in place and ordering a new elution plant. And that will enable us to strip and regenerate activated carbon for the tanks to help increase recovery rate as well. So that project is underway. So what you're getting the sense from us is there's a lot of operational efficiencies that will come through in the latter half of the year and early next year as we get through that plant. Sounds good.
Thank you very much. I'll get back to you.
Thank you, Heiko.
The next question will come from Mike Niehauser with Roth Capital. Please go ahead.
Steven, can you hear me okay?
Yeah, I can hear you fine, Mike. How are you doing this morning?
Good, thank you. With regards to a flotation circuit, what would be the timing of that, assuming that you decide to move forward with it, and how much of that could be funded, do you think, internally?
Yeah, so the current thing is we are looking at that, and I suspect that will be a 12-month project, roughly, because there's lots of components and lots of moving parts to it, and it will come to the market over time when that is upgraded. With regards to financing of that, look, Buck Reef now has over $17 to $20 million of adjusted EBTA. We'll move up that more quickly by more than likely debt financing that. We're in discussions with debt finance providers for that now.
Okay. And with regards to Stanford Bridge, I can't recall how that discovery was made as if it kind of showed itself in the pit wall. It seems like when I was out there, there was some higher grades in that area where that might be coming in, but I may be wrong. But how was that discovered and how soon could that come into the mine plan?
It was discovered two ways. One was we sunk a metallurgical hole in order. No, sorry, not the metallurgical hole. We sunk the geotech hole. in order to determine what the pit slope angle should be. And there was gold in that particular geotech hole. And then when you looked at where the geotech hole was, and then you looked at the side of the pit, you could see it. And so that's how it was discovered. And then we put in some drill exploration holes and it came up fairly well. So that's how it was discovered. It wouldn't be the first... You know, mine where you have that type of discovery. So that's in essence, that's why we needed you to do the geophysicals and the magnetic works in order to figure out if there's any other of these type of zones that cross the buck reef property. What was the second part of your question there, Mike?
Yeah, how soon could it be? Because my thought was that the fact that you could see it on the side of the pit, it seems like you don't have to go deep to get at least some of the goodness out of it. but you know, it, it looks like it's right there, but then again, they looks like it extends a lot deeper too. And, um, I just, there's, it's still early days of course, but just curious what your thoughts are.
Yeah. So it's going to dip like that, right. A little bit is what you're seeing given, um, uh, gig given, uh, you know, what you saw in the draw results, you read them correctly. So we have to put in more drill holes to get more higher confidence and the continuity. Um, And then we, which could be higher or lower, right, depending on what comes back in those drill holes. And then we have to figure out what's the best way to mine it, whether it's going to be open pit for part of it, underground for another part of it, and bring that into resource. I think we're at a stage now where we conceptually start looking at these sort of scenarios, but we're not at a stage to move it into the mine plan yet.
Thank you. Good answer. And if I could just ask Richard what he's excited about coming to TRX. And that's my last question.
Yeah, excellent. I'll let him answer that one.
Thank you, Mike. Nice to hear your voice. Look, Stanford Bridge probably is the most exciting. But, look, I've been to Tanzania before. I enjoy working here. You've got a very willing and... porous workforce here that soak up the information and really seem to respond well to the challenge that we've got to get up, challenges that, you know, we put them up for. So a combination of good people and a very nice all body. So I like the challenge.
Very good. Thank you.
I'd now like to hand the call back over to Mr. Stephen Maloney, who will take us through questions submitted in writing. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah, so we don't have too, too many questions today in writing. As you can tell, we constantly give quite comprehensive answers. So the question I have here is that the You know, some people have noticed that I've been on more podcasts and wondering if we're going to sponsor podcasts or are we planning to do more podcasts? So the answer to that, yes, we've been on more podcasts. I suspect we'll be on more podcasts, whether we're going to sponsor podcasts or not. We will look at that and see what the value is. I think that that's certainly something that we're open to. Are we going to do more podcasts? Yes, and I think you'll see a series coming out of Tanzania around podcasts around some of our employees, where we think we're going, how we're interacting locally, and those sort of things that we push through our media channels over time. We do have you know, people hired in Tanzania to help us do those type of podcasts. And certainly we are doing more podcasts over here. So yes, this business, as I said, it's a low cost asset, even at low head grades, it continually expands. There is a good investment thesis here and we need to get out to the market and tell more people about it. I think that's it. Trying to see if I got another.
Yeah, I think Greg's on the line. Chuck, if you could put him through, that would be great. Yes, sir.
Yeah, absolutely. Mr. Greg Weaver with Invecta Capital Management. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks, guys, for giving me the opportunity here. Good, good. Just two quick questions. Is the Head grade, mainly a function of oxide versus sulfide ore body?
No. Head grade is just a function of there's different grades and different parts of the deposit, and you've got to mine it in a sequence.
Okay. And could the plant in its current state handle 100% sulfide ore?
It's not ideal. Certainly we would prefer to have the flotation circuit in place before that. What happens in the plant is, you have your activated carbon in your tanks. And you want that carbon to be floating in the tank. So you want a viscosity in the tank that's very good. So the ideal mix is about 10% to 15% oxides and the rest sulfides. And you can get the flotation of your carbon to be decent with that. And that's kind of how we feed it today. So there's enough oxides around the property to do that.
Right. You answered that. That was a nice question. Okay. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thanks, Craig.
The next question will come from Al Krug with TRX. Please go ahead. Al? Mr. Krug, your line is open.
Can you hear me?
Yeah, I can hear you. Yes.
I've listened to different conversations of TRX on YouTube. Is there a spot where we can go and where these different conversations webcast can be accumulated where a shareholder can go to?
yeah so christina is currently pulling together the various um articles and and podcasts that have been done by trx and we'll have them on our website um for instance there was a um an article by myself in the mining journal uh this week um where i was talking about you'll never explore alone um and that's been posted on to linkedin and other sources so we need to do a better job of getting that onto our website for you guys
And I watched a couple of the conversations with the old folks, Denny and Bill Holter and so forth. And so hopefully I'll be back on.
Yeah, we should follow up with, you know, I do that on a quarterly basis with those guys. And certainly both... and particularly Bill and also Danny have a following and they push it out through their various media channels as well.
Thank you.
And I'd like to challenge me.
I would like to hand the call back over to Mr. Maloney for any written questions.
Yeah, I think, I don't think, no, we might have more written questions. Give me one second. No, I don't think we have any other written questions.
There's one more, Stephen, from Peter Smith.
Okay. Mike, you want to read it to me?
Sure. The question was whether TRX still participates in Kegosi, and the comment was that it appears as though the Tanzanian government is issuing 2,000 additional mining licenses there, albeit it was an area that was previously designated as a, quote, forest reserve. Can you comment on Kegosi, Stephen, please?
Yeah, so TRX... no longer has Kegosi. It didn't have Kegosi when I joined just over four years ago. There was a lawsuit with the government around Kegosi and intatemia at the time. With regards to licenses being issued in that area, I suspect they're mainly primary mining licenses, which are smaller mining licenses. in that area, if the number is right, is 2000, it would be smaller licenses. So right now, no, TRX does not have Kikosi. The only license that we have is a special mining license at Buck Reef.
David, I think that answers all the questions that were both in the queue on voice and text.
Excellent. Well, thank you. Thanks, everyone, for joining today. I'll leave you with this. In a single mine asset, you have to move through lower grade profiles at times, as well as a stripping campaign that's normal. The good news is there's great exploration results continually coming in. We expect that to continue over time. And also, the asset's proving itself out to be a very low cost asset, even at a low grade profile, as well as a lower recovery profile in a plant that can get a lot more efficient as you're hearing on this call, we're still a low cost asset. So it's proving out that in Tanzania, we can operate at a very low cost. We can build at a very low cost. For instance, this plant has costed us less than $20 million. And I continually say this, other assets to build the same size plant are in the 70, $80 million range. We've done this on time, on budget and extremely cost-effective and are still very low cost. Are there improvements to be made? Yes, but I don't think, and I'm quite confident saying this, I don't know anybody who's done it on this cost basis anywhere else. And so when I reflect on that, the growth profile of this business can continue on a very low cost basis, very vis-a-vis other miners that are out there. I would encourage you to tell your friends that, that if we continue to build this out, that it's going to be on a low-cost basis going forward. So that's what we're looking at, Richard. In our conversation since you joined, I think you're seeing the same thing as we piece this together. As we have a flow sheet right in front of us, we'll cost that out, and it will be low-cost relative to what others will build it for again.
Are you on mute, Richard? Loads of potential.
Loads of potential.
Yeah, loads of potential, loads of room for improvement as well, and a wonderful Orbody to boot. So I think, yeah, there's plenty of scope for us to increase production, scale us up significantly in throughput and in production once we get down to these higher grades in the deeper sections of the Orbody.
And find other goals like Stanford Bridge and Anfield and hopefully move those. Absolutely. So there's lots of potential here. We're excited. We're doing it on a low cost basis and stay tuned. So as it was saying, Tanzania, Asante Sana. Thank you very much.
This brings a close to today's meeting. You may now disconnect. Thank you for your participation and have a pleasant day.