Ann: Quarterly Activities Report, page-33

“Poor operationally”, “surprised that costs were high”

Think you’re being a tad harsh - they just broke all the records in June.

I’ll admit - C1 production costs of A$47m were about A$5m higher than I was expecting and recoveries low.. but there’s some clear explainers there on the amount of silicates in the ore. Did a lot more mining this quarter too.

The C1 is just ~A$18k/t but it’s the AISC that looks high and that’s because they’ve been spending $20m per quarter into capex the past couple of quarters ($80m per annum). Pre the Area5 development works the sustaining capital figure was less than half this.

The added capital is going into improvement projects - new mining equipment, tailings upgrades, and upgrades to power, dewatering and communications infrastructure. This is now a well capitalised mine. The benefits of which should be seen over the coming years. So my guess is either the capex ($) comes down here to reduce AISC or the productivity (t) continues to improve with this investment which will have the same effect on unit costs… who knows maybe both happen.. tbd.