7/23/2024

speaker
Darcy
Conference Operator

I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Brian Quinn, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

speaker
Brian Quinn
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks Darcy and thanks for those who have joined us today for our release of our FY24 Q4 results. I would like to firstly introduce everyone on the call from Aurelia. We have Martin Cummings, our Chief Financial Officer, Andrew Graham, Chief Technical and Business Development Officer and Angus Wiley, our new Cobar Regional General Manager who's just been recently promoted from our GM DAGS role after several good years of performance at DAGS. We'll use the saliva pack presentation that was released for the purpose of talking through the quarterly results and at the end I'll ask the team members to answer any specific questions you may have from the presentation. We'll focus today on our quarterly results and be providing a more fulsome forward look at the FY25 sorry, at the end of year results for FY24, we will be talking through our FY25 guidance, projects, discussion on portfolio optimisation at that sort of time at the end of August. Hope you can all join for that call at the end of August. If I just start with the first slide, really the four key messages I'd like to relay is we have delivered on our FY24 guidance for production and costs. Two, we have continued with our operational improvement plans. both with our COBAR regional team in place and stepping up performance. Three, our Federation remains on track for first DOPOR in late Q1 FY25. And four, we have reported in the last quarter some exceptional results in our exploration, and we'll have Andrew talk through some of that. Just on the slide four, Our guidance result shows a strong delivery in the last quarter for all commodities and costs. This has been a great team effort for the last quarter, and the broader operational teams have really stepped up to show what's possible. In our previous announcements, we talked about the final quarter being a big quarter with higher-grade stoves coming online, and I'm pleased to basically provide that feedback that we have achieved that. We've been successful in both recovering the ore and getting some good recoveries through the processing plant. On slide five, our safety performance has improved with less injuries this quarter, but unfortunately still one too many. We have a renewed focus in the quarter on using our Take Fives and JHAs and quality field leadership to really ensure people are working safely and have the time and the tools and skills to complete the work safely. It's non-negotiable that people go... It's actually non-negotiable. We need our people to go home safely every day. The majority of the injuries have been cuts, slips and trips on the site, but still there's much we can do to sort of stop that from occurring and work with our teams to really ensure that we do go home every day safely. Looking forward into FY25, our focus on the field leadership and the training around that will be very much a step up and we'll also be focusing on fatal risk protocols to ensure we can really get our fatal risk under control and updated in line with where our business is going. A real positive for Aurelia has been the sign-off of our sustainability strategy for the business. Going forward, we'll now have clear strategies for safety standards, a clear focus on reducing emissions and the use of town water. And in addition to that, we'll have some really clear plans around adding value to our communities that we're working with, and we want to be good neighbours with these communities going forward. On slide six, operationally, Firstly, operationally we delivered a strong fourth quarter, delivering both strong production at Dargs and at Peak. Peak delivered well in mining and the processing areas. Mined ore was 18% up this quarter at 175,000 tonnes. Meters remained above 700 metres per quarter that we've discussed on several of the different quarterly conversations. Mining unit costs per tonne reduced again from $134 to $120 per tonne from the previous quarter, and our processing plants also delivered a great result with record recoveries in zinc and lead commodities, which was also very pleasing for us. The combination of all these good results provided an always-sustaining cost for the June quarter of $1,277 per ounce, noting that the full-year number was $2,035, which was also within the guidance that we'd reported for the full year. The Peak Mine continued over the quarter to deliver also copper from Chesney, which continues to provide good grades and good recoveries through the mill. This has been very encouraging for us, obviously, as we transition over the coming years into the Peak North Mine, having these good grades and good recoveries is very much in line with our business plan going forward. On slide seven, Dargs is mainly focused on production drilling, stoping and processing of the quarter, and we'll finish in Q1 FY25. The operational team has delivered very consistent results at a low cost and they continue to look for those cost opportunities as we progress. We're on the final stopes now and some of the mining crews have already started to finish on site as their roster has come to an end. At this stage, mining will finish at the end of July and processing will finish towards the end of August. At this point, there will be a small crew moving to care and maintenance while we start selling off the assets and demilitarising the site ready for remediation over the coming 12 months. A full plan has been developed of all the activities and organisational structure signed off for the ongoing works and we're still in the process of selling off the plant and equipment to understand and basically to understand through the various options and offers we've been given what our sale proceeds will be versus our cost remediation. There's obviously going to be a trade-off there and we'll continue to look at that over the coming months. On slide 8 for Federation, the Federation project has continued to deliver work packages including surface construction, which has involved the ROM stockpile build as the Hawleys routes have been put in place. And also these things are important for our preparation for our production or in Q1 FY25. Those following roads will be what we take the ore from Federation to Peak on and join the Berthelm Road, which then joins the main highways up towards Peak. The power project upgrades have also been progressing in parallel to be ready in time for the site growth. and there was an acceleration in the construction of water dams and infrastructure to manage the heavy rainfalls we experienced over this quarter. Noting this will be important for both wet and dry seasons, having dam capacity to capture water in wet and to use the water in the dry is obviously something we're very mindful of in terms of laying out the site properly for the future. On the people side, we've continued to onboard new employees. And in parallel to that, a focus has been to really look at the operations readiness works to include operational contracts, people planning and systems, and doing a lot of work around completing risk assessments and management plans for the operations when we go into full production. But as reported, we have had some challenges this quarter with water, both at Federation and some water issues at DARGS. Rainfall, firstly, at DARGS has continued to increase water levels significantly. in the TSF at a time when mining has come to an end and it's going to put pressure on our remediation works timing. Nothing that can't be managed, but it's just one thing we're working through. But the multiple rain offence at Federation has created more rainfall than the project can manage while we're in this middle of the project build. Even all the evaporators and pumps that were installed in February were not as effective as planned. Fortunately, we had in our planning and approved through the regulator to install a large water management dam and associated infrastructure So these were fast-tracked, and now we are really bolstering up the water management capacity going forward. To preserve some of the cash for the project, we paused underground works. People were sort of redeployed under other works through our contracting partners, and we recommenced operations in early July. The impact of these delays have meant that our ore drive development and infill drilling programs have been delayed. and hence our ability to finalise our geological models and stoking plans for the remainder of FY25 ramp-up. But these will be finalised now. Development has resumed and we'll be releasing some of that information in our four-year results with our guidance in August. We've also experienced some inflation pressures on the project for labour, diesel, concrete and equipment hire. These cost inflations have drawn down some of the contingency, but also we've continued to review the scope of the project and look for improvements in our capital to keep us within our approved budget. It's our intention at the four-year results to provide some details of the changes to the project scope that we've used to stay within budget. Ultimately, the result of the production performance for the business and the capital works has mentally resulted in $116 million cash in our balance sheet. which is a great finish to the year. I'll obviously have Martin talk to some of those results later. In the meantime, I'll pass over to Andrew to speak through some of the exceptional exploration results we've continued to unlock in our region. Thanks, Andrew.

speaker
Andrew Graham
Chief Technical and Business Development Officer

Thanks, Brian. And for those who've been reading our releases, certainly the exploration results have been exceptional. So just to touch on a few of those. During the quarter, first of all, those following along, we're on slide nine. We received assays from our federation drilling that we did discuss in the last quarterly, although at that stage the results were visual rather than having assays. As expected, the assays came back and certainly confirmed what for us was a very exciting development federation. And it was released on the 14th of June. And if you haven't had a look, I'd suggest it's worth a look. Basically, drilling to the west intercepted high-grade mineralisation at about a 140-metre offset to the north of the strike of the main ore body. Now, why is this exciting? Well, certainly exciting, and on the slide you can see some of the grades there. We're talking 50% plus lead plus zinc with great copper and great gold. So that in itself is exciting. But the real exciting thing there for me is it opens up the potential for federation mineralisation to continue to the west. on that offset. So certainly plenty there for our exploration team to get into. Slide 9 of Owen from our Energy District team, certainly got his work cut out for him in the next while. That release we also put out information on Lancelot. Those who have good memories will recall that we put out some reduced polarisation work on land slot some time ago. We'd followed that up following our progressive approach to exploration to keeping costs low through soil and auger sampling, which certainly came out with some very interesting results. And we got some coincident copper, lead and zinc anomalism, and that was coincident again with the IP result. So given us some good targets and we'll be drilling that in FY25. Moving away from the Nimidji District and onto the Cobar District up around our Peak Mine on slide 10, during the quarter we also released an exploration update on a range of drilling that we've been doing there and again if you haven't had a look, 17th of July we put out that release and it's worth following up with a look. Particularly pleasing to me in this release was the copper success that we had and Peak does transition this year from to being dominantly fed by copper ores and definitely getting some good copper exploration success will support a long life for Peak as a copper mine. To touch on a few of those, Queen Bee, it's a historical mining area 10km south of the Peak processing plant. Results did include 17 metres of 4.7% copper, which I'm sure everyone agrees is a fantastic result. Within that, up to 17% copper grade. Early days for Queen Bee, but the hope for us is it develops into an ore body that supports a mine, which will then feed the peak processing plant only 10 k's away. We also saw some really good intercepts in Mount Pleasant, you know, grades up to 11% copper. Mount Pleasant is effectively the next ore body along from Burra Bungee, and you may recall that we released Burra Bungee results in March last year. It's in that north minor peak. and it's really starting to build an interesting copper picture in North Mine beyond Great Koba. We all know about Great Koba. So we're now extending the known ore bodies, and with this drilling, continuing to delineate additional ore to the south. And while on existing ore bodies, the release also included some Jubilee North drilling. That also is in the Peat North Mines, just north of our mining areas. And we've been able... with that drilling to extend mineralisation about 150 metres to the north. Now, interestingly, that is on the way to Great Cobar. So certainly some great potential for that to come into the plant. Photo in slide 10 of Fernanda from our Cobar district team. The reality is these results, be it around Federation, you know, in that Nimidji district or up around Cobar, are a real credit to our exploration team who have continued to deliver the goods Pass over now to Martin, who's going to cover off some balance sheet.

speaker
Martin Cummings
Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Andrew. So I'll be turning to slide 11. And as Brian mentioned, this quarter we've continued to strengthen our balance sheet with total cash on hand growing to $116.5 million. So that's up from $116.9 million in the March quarter. And in turn, it's taken total liquidity now to over $150 million. This is a fantastic performance. and was the result of strong cash from our assets. And to put this into perspective, Peak and Darves almost completely funded our investments in federation and in exploration this year, with a total of around $75 million of cash flow generated. Peak had a very strong finish to the quarter, with over $25 million of cash, which took cash flow to $37 million for the year. It was pleasing to see further progress in improving our mining efficiencies, which led to lower unit rates, and this will continue to be a focus area for us in FY25. As I mentioned last quarter, our goal of $100 a tonne remains and will be driven in part from cost efficiencies, but also from transitioning to higher volumes from the north mine. Our processing costs were slightly higher this quarter, really driven by higher variable costs on reagents and power, as well as some labour to cover the additional processing time. With Federation ore coming to peak in FY25, our plans are now underway to set up the process plant to run for longer periods. And the record recoveries achieved were also very pleasing, given it sets us up well once this higher grade ore comes to the mill. For Dargs, again, the operation performed admirably, and another strong quarter with cash flow of $10.2 million. And that contributed to a full year result, again, of around $37 million for that site as well. Our operating costs are trending lower as we planned and as the team starts to ramp down activity on site. As Brian mentioned, we do expect mining to complete at the end of this month and processing in August. We will be continuing with shipments of concentrate through the remainder of the quarter and once processing concludes, we also will transition the site into closure mode. In terms of DAGs around closure costs and around other related items such as tax losses, I'll carry those items over to next month when we talk through FY25. Brian has gone through the achievements at Federation this quarter despite the wet weather, but in terms of spend, we came in slightly below the bottom end of the revised guidance. And again, I'll update you on what FY25 looks like next month. For exploration, the great results that Andrew has just taken us through In total was an investment of just over $11 million and a very pleasing investment in terms of the outcomes. And finally, I'll just cover off. You'll note with these attractive commodity prices, we did add to our hedge book during late June and early July. So the hedge positions there are final. But what we did do is add around 14,000 ounces of gold, just under 6,000 tons of zinc and just under 7,000 tons of lead. And they will be settled monthly up to June 2025. The average prices you can see of the total book are on that page. As previously mentioned, hedging for me is not a punt on commodity prices. It's really about providing protection to our revenue and our cash flows while we're still constructing federation. But that said, more than 50% of our revenue remains exposed to spot price movements. So that's all I'll cover today. Thanks for your time. I'll hand it back to Brian. Thanks, Martin.

speaker
Brian Quinn
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer

Look, obviously... Just on the final slide, to keep the message very clear, really around we are focused on delivering our operation performance to the right level to really get our mills filled in the coming years. And really to do that, I'll just talk through the six key dot points. We are focused on getting our first stop for FY25 late Q1. We're relentlessly going after improvements in unit costs and performance at peak. which is going to be our focus over the next 12 months, especially as we move into the north mine and transition into Cobar predominantly in the next couple of years. We're progressing our optimisation works for Cobar. This includes finalisation of a trade-off piece of work that we're doing between expanding the peak, processing the silly verse, restarting HERA. Once that is actually done, we'll release that information in the coming months. We've also been really focused on attracting good talent into our Cobar regional team. They've got some really exciting work coming up, especially with obviously improving the current operations, the development project of Federation, the great Cobar sort of project beyond that, and some other sort of optimization work we're doing also. So this is an exciting time for people to join Aurelia. Our focus is also to continue to operate DARG safely and with good cash generation till the end. And as I mentioned earlier, that end is coming in the next couple of months. And then we're deep in the process of looking at what we're selling in the market and also the closure plan that goes behind that as well. Last but not least, it's important to keep our eye on the prize for the future. Our exploration is fundamental to us. It's really looking what's next beyond Great Cobar and how do we prioritise that. So our mills have the... a capacity well beyond Great Cobar. So, you know, as Andrew talked to, we've got a lot of exciting information coming out around our federation and Queen Bee and Nimigi. And so obviously our focus will be on making sure we have that project and that program that works well for advancing our options. All of these actions will build our portfolio to be a strong company with multiple options in the future and obviously transitioning to copper dominance in the future as well. So thanks, Darcy. I will pass over to you to facilitate the questions, and I'll take it back after the questions. Thank you, Darcy.

speaker
Darcy
Conference Operator

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star 2. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Adam Baker from Macquarie. Please go ahead.

speaker
Adam Baker
Analyst, Macquarie

Morning, Brian and team. Good quarter. Peak ore mine, 175,000 tonnes, ramping up nicely there. Just wondering how you're thinking about the tie-in to Federation, bringing the ore online there, trucking that up to peak, and then thinking about, you know, potential milk capacity limits at peak. In addition to that, how do you think about HERA in context of the strong performance at peak on its own basis, in addition to bringing federation online. Thank you.

speaker
Brian Quinn
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks for the question. Look, I think, broadly speaking, the current baseline plan that we have is we will continue operating peak and obviously transitioning over the next couple of years from South Mine and more into the North Mine. Obviously, you recognise that the North Mine has got obviously... a dominance around copper and less lead zinc. We will be ramping up Federation in line with a plan we'll put out with guidance in late August. And that volume will move its way from Federation to peak in the sort of period. And obviously the current base case we've talked to the market about is once the raw volume is achieved, then we'll be restarting the HERA plant. We're obviously in parallel running an optimisation process through Andrew Graham at the moment to look at what are the options around putting more through peak. That study hasn't been released yet and obviously the engineering is being done on the optionality around that. Once we have a view of if there's a change, we'll release that information to the market. But at this stage, it'll be ramping up volume into the peak processing facility. And once we have the view of what that looks like in terms of volume, HERA will restart and be processing the remainder of the ore. But we'll provide more details of that as we progress that project in the background.

speaker
Adam Baker
Analyst, Macquarie

Thanks. And can you just remind me the current capacity of the peak plant as it stands at the moment?

speaker
Brian Quinn
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer

The peak plant's 800,000 tonnes capacity.

speaker
Adam Baker
Analyst, Macquarie

Got it. Thanks. And in context of the strong exploration results you've been having in light of the stronger copper price environment, are you looking at spending more on the belt heading into FY25? Or you might defer that question to next month, I guess. More on exploration, you're saying? Yeah, that's right. More on exploration, more drill metres into the ground.

speaker
Brian Quinn
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer

Look, I think our drilling has been great to FY24. We'll release information on the drilling as we provide guidance and sort of the outlook at the end of August is probably the best way to deal with that one. All right. Thanks, Brian.

speaker
Darcy
Conference Operator

Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone. Your next question comes from Paul Caner from Ordmanet. Please go ahead.

speaker
Paul Caner
Analyst, Ordmanet

Hi, Jen. Yeah, thanks for taking my questions. A couple... If I may. Firstly, on gold production versus sold, it seems like there's a bit of a con build-up at both DAGs and peak. How much should we assume sort of gets unwound next quarter? Obviously, all the con at DAG should unwind, but how much was sort of sitting there at the end of June?

speaker
Martin Cummings
Chief Financial Officer

Hi, Paul. Martin here. Look, yeah, the con, just to sort of walk you through what... took place towards the end of the quarter. We tried to maximise our sales sensibly. So I guess the first message is I wanted it to be a sustainable sales period so that we didn't just trash July and August. So we do have in total similar dollar value concentrates sitting on the ground that we did in March. Now, some of that has been price driven as well in terms of the dollar value. Look, there'll be a little bit of unwind. Reason being is given it was year end at peak, we did some of our advances, which are in the normal course. We did them slightly earlier just to make sure the cash came in. So there was production, very good production for the last around nine days of June that wasn't sold. So yes, there'll be a little bit from peak, but not extraordinary. At Dargs, yeah, there is, I think, around 2,500-odd ounces of methylene con that will be unwound. So, you know, we will have the positive cash flow, you know, impact from that coming through in the September quarter.

speaker
Paul Caner
Analyst, Ordmanet

Yeah, great. Thanks. Thanks, Martin. And then just secondly, on Federation, that infill drilling, obviously, a little bit behind because of the wet weather. How much do you think that's sort of going to impact the ramp up in terms of tons out of the ground and ultimately production in FY25 or should we hold off until we get guidance in August?

speaker
Brian Quinn
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, look, I think the best result there is just to wait till we get the guidance. A couple of things, there was obviously the underground ore development. We were actually wanting to get in there and actually do the underground ore development into those stope areas to be able to reconcile the current models and what's happening underground, which is just normal for a brand-new mine. Secondly, the infill drilling is obviously critical for establishing the area. We're also waiting for the infill drilling results to come back with the assays as well from previous drilling. So there's kind of a combination of things we want to sort of bring together and correlate and then provide confidence about where we're going as a company. It's sort of just more making sure we triangulate all the bits of data we have and we'll be getting out of the coming weeks as well. So we'll provide guidance for that in the August meeting.

speaker
Paul Caner
Analyst, Ordmanet

Yeah, no, understood. I guess what I'm trying to get a sense of is can you fast track some of that infill drilling to catch up versus what you had sort of originally planned?

speaker
Brian Quinn
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer

We'll be going as fast for the infill drilling as possible, 100%. So easy. Thanks.

speaker
Paul Caner
Analyst, Ordmanet

That's it for me.

speaker
Darcy
Conference Operator

Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone. Your next question comes from David Coates from Bell Potter Securities. Please go ahead.

speaker
David Coates
Analyst, Bell Potter Securities

Morning, Brian. Morning, Martin. Morning, Andrew. Thanks for your time this morning. Congratulations on the strong quarter. My question is just a broader one. The grey quarter, obviously, really good sort of production cost result for a round. If you could sort of pinpoint what's really kind of been the underlying driver of that, is it sort of mining sequence and grades or are there some more kind of operational issues you've seen strong improvement in that have given that result?

speaker
Brian Quinn
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, thanks, David. I might answer and hand over to Angus to make a comment too. Look, I think ultimately what we said in the previous quarter was we had obviously to change some of the sequencing around in quarter three due to some technical issues and online analyzers that failed. So we had to change the sequence around inside the mine, which is never ideal. But obviously coming into this quarter, the team has delivered that. And I'd say in addition to that, we've had some really good results from both mining to get the ore out and from processing mining to be able to get really good recoveries that we sort of announced as well. So I think overall, we sort of described that in the third quarter, what our plan was and what's been pleasing as a team has delivered that in the fourth quarter. I think in terms of DAGs, obviously they've been consistently performing and taking out the stopes in the sequence that was planned and have obviously been able to recover the grade and the volumes that they'd committed to on an ongoing basis. So they really, both sites, both teams have delivered in line with the plan, both at the mining and the planning, the mining and the processing. Anything you want to add to that, Angus, at all?

speaker
Angus Wiley
Cobar Regional General Manager

Yeah, thanks, Brian. Really just a lot of focus on the maintenance side as well from the underground equipment, making sure we're getting the reliability out of the equipment as well as working on

speaker
David Coates
Analyst, Bell Potter Securities

a strong focus and that will continue into this new year and we're really looking to ramp up and make sure that availability and utilization is maximized excellent i suppose that question another way of asking that question i guess is um how sustainable i guess is that it sounds like some of its mining sequence which will even flow but some operational issues that are sort of fundamentally sustainable and um and and positively production outlook from the operations.

speaker
Brian Quinn
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, look, I think the key thing here, David, there's nothing done this last quarter to shortcut to get the results. I think moving into quarter one of FY25, it's business as usual. There was no sort of last minute sprint to the end and then leave a mess for FY25. The team has been very much around, we've got a plan, we need to deliver it. It needs to align to our life of mine plan and keep pushing on towards that. So, as Angus mentioned, a lot of it's about getting the fundamentals right, have a plan, deliver the plan, make sure the available utilisation's right, and make sure we've done it at the right cost. So, there's nothing untoward or unusual about what we're doing. I think the sequencing was, because of the OSA that failed in quarter three, that sort of reshuffled things. But as we've mentioned in previous quarters, our focus has been about getting development leaders ahead, providing us a couple of months of sort of time to be able to get in there, do the support work, get the production drilling, get the services done and get stoping ready so we're not just in time on every stop. That's been the focus over the last 12 months to move that forward, catching up from the previous year. So that's got to continue on. Nothing's going to change with that and we need to get our development ahead even further. We'd like it to be even further ahead than we currently are now, going to FY25 and FY26.

speaker
David Coates
Analyst, Bell Potter Securities

Excellent. I'll look forward to seeing the FY25 guidance in August. Cheers. Thanks, guys.

speaker
Darcy
Conference Operator

Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question, it comes from Paul Caner from Ordmanet. Please go ahead. Pardon me, Paul. Your line is live.

speaker
Paul Caner
Analyst, Ordmanet

Sorry, the mute function there. Yeah, sorry, just a follow-up for myself. On that optimisation plan, when can we expect that this quarter? And then just sort of on top of that, I guess how should we be thinking about Great Cobar obviously sort of transitioning to Peak North, but then thereafter, do we just see Great Cobar sort of replacing Peak North?

speaker
Brian Quinn
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer

Look, I'll firstly just mention most of that information will come out in terms of our plans will come out in the four-year results as far as the project is concerned. And we'll also be providing information on FID in FY25. So we'll have an FID sort of process moving forward with FY25 for Great Cobra. Obviously, we've been very fortunate to have the Chesney and the Jubilee area to be able to get some really good copper out of and good recoveries and grades out of that has actually allowed us to push back that capital and that sort of progress to great cobar. But, you know, our aim in FY25 is to push great cobar to FID in this financial year. Andrew, do you want to talk briefly about the optimisation project? I don't want people to be distracted by it. We have a current base plan, which actually is to fill Peak Mill and then obviously the option is Current default is we move into HERA, but the optimisation project is really looking at what else could we do to improve our value of our business. Andrew, do you want to just talk to any key points there for the optimisation? Yeah, no problem, Brian.

speaker
Andrew Graham
Chief Technical and Business Development Officer

And I think that point is very valid. We have a plan that works. We have a plan that's permitted that we can deliver on straight away, which is the one Brian talked about, filling up peak and then restarting HERA. And we have had some involvement from engineering and engineering firm working with us on HERA to have a look at the restarts and the costings and those sorts of things and it'll be part of when we come out with a COBRA optimisation. The good news on that is there are no surprises and HERA will be shut down well and should restart relatively easily but what we are looking at is can we do better and so the way you should think about it is we have a base plan and there's a value to that plan and we will engage with and take forward an approach that improves that value on a fully risk basis so there's other elements around permitting and those sorts of things that we're well advanced on but we just need all that to come together to look that there's a risk value improvement to taking it through peak but conceptually it makes some sense and we've got engineering support working with us on coming out with that right answer.

speaker
Paul Caner
Analyst, Ordmanet

Yeah, understood, Andrew. Thanks for that, Colin. So I guess our base case should be fill peak mill and then sort of add in Great Cobar thereafter and, yeah, I guess potentially have HERA coming on or if not, expanding the peak mill.

speaker
Andrew Graham
Chief Technical and Business Development Officer

Paul, just to touch on your question on Great Cobar, so... Thinking about the evolution of Peak, we're certainly targeting some Southmine ores at the moment, supplemented with Northmine, and the higher NSR materials, particularly leadseed gold material, is coming from Southmine. We will continue to do that, but you'll see proportionally more Northmine coming in. And that's Chesney and other ore bodies, so all that we have available and developed today. At the right time, then we make... an approach towards Great Cobar. We are doing a series of work on Great Cobar at the moment, looking at things like the geotech hole we drill, the venture, for example, ventilation, for example, just to be sure that when we do go, it's a low-risk project that we know we can deliver. But, you know, if you look at the life of mine for Peak, it does transition to North Mine and it does transition to being a large proportion coming from Great Cobar So when I talk about some of these exploration successes in North Mine, the bit that gets me so excited is it takes our dependence in some ways off Great Cobra and allows us to then be able to feed copper ores from a range of ore bodies, which, as you know, de-risks our ability to deliver.

speaker
Paul Caner
Analyst, Ordmanet

No, that's great. That's all the colour I need. Thanks. Thanks, Andrew.

speaker
Darcy
Conference Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr Quinn for closing remarks.

speaker
Brian Quinn
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Darcy. First, I want to thank the Relia team for this quarter. Obviously, we delivered what we said we were going to deliver, and that's been based on quarter by quarter we've been focused on doing that. The executive team has really stood up and made sure we're focusing on the right things, and we've been well supported by the board and shareholders to continue building our business as well. We look forward to providing some more information at the four-year results in late August. As I mentioned in my opening, we'll provide updates on our projects, our production and cost guidance and outlook, and we'll sort of have a lot more information going forward so we can provide that to our investors and shareholders where we're going as a company. But otherwise, thanks, everyone, for dialling in today. Thanks for the questions, and we look forward to working with you guys in the coming months. Thank you very much.

speaker
Darcy
Conference Operator

Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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