Holdonman wrote "Waste haulage costs have shown to be high; $25...

Holdonman wrote
"Waste haulage costs have shown to be high; $25 per BCM Mar, $15 per BCM June; yet other similar mines in the region average $6 BCM for waste removal; do the sums my estimate is 1.3M BCM of slip material;"

Maybe you have lumped ore and waste removal together in the one cost to get your $15BCM cost , as I can not recall RED putting out any announcement differentiating ore mining costs from waste mining costs ie they "aggregated" the costs.

Waste removal is normally a lower cost per tonne to remove than ore per tonne plus is normally operationally easier to schedule, (no need to adjust toa ROM pad requirements, excavator has no need to delineate from ore body, and often less vertical distance to truck )