Ann: RIU Conference Presentation, page-66

It is worth reminding ourselves that in the last few years of the open cut, HGO did a very good job of hedging part of the future production and so getting better prices than spot (ie over several six month periods the realised price achieved by HGO inclusive of hedging was better than they would have achieved if they had sold at spot prices over the period). This protected against lows in the copper price, provided greater certainty and increased profits.
The situation was, of course, different then, in that it was an open cut and HGO had operational experience and could predict with reasonable confidence what its future production would be.
Now HGO has less experience (with the UG) and would be somewhat less confident about production predictions as it is yet to reach a "steady state" production.
However, I hope that the HGO Board has retained the corporate knowledge of its past successful hedging strategy, and can use that to inform current strategy (but not necessarily replicate it).