Morning. It's 11:00 A.M. Welcome to the AGM of AIC Mines. I'm Josef El-Raghy, your chairman. I'm joined on my left by Aaron Colleran and Company Secretary Audrey Ferguson. Brett Montgomery and Jon Young to my right. Linda Hale joining us by Zoom. Also joining us virtually, Mark Upcroft from PwC, who's our audit partner. Just briefly, the year in review, Eloise produced 13,412 tonnes of copper in concentrate at an all-in sustaining cost of $5.15 a pound, a 27% increase in production, 8% reduction in costs from the prior year. Copper contained in mineral resource and ore reserves increased by 49% and 40% respectively compared to the prior year. The Swagman Shoot located between Eloise and Jericho was discovered, and underground development of the Jericho copper deposit commenced. Company is in a far stronger position than it was a year ago.
Consequently, I expect the coming 12 months will deliver further success. Once we've completed the formal business of the meeting, your MD will provide an update on the company's activities in a more fulsome manner. We'll get to the formal business of the meeting and get that out of the way. Shareholders that are attending in person will have the opportunity to ask questions about the resolutions. However, shareholders joining the webcast only in listen mode. In respect of the formalities, I'll note the following. We have a quorum in attendance with the requirements of the company's constitution. Proxies have been received from 190 shareholders representing 42% of the company or 243 million shares. The notice of meeting was dispatched on the 18th of October, 2024, to all registered members, and I propose that that notice of this meeting be taken as read.
Also, the minutes of the EGM held on the 24th of July are available for inspection. To streamline the meeting, details of the resolutions and the proxy votes for each resolution will be displayed on this screen, and as such, I don't intend to read each of them out to you. Voting on all resolutions will be by way of a poll taken at the end of the meeting or once we flick through this screen. Our share registrar, Computershare, will oversee the conduct of the poll and act as scrutineers. So with that, we will proceed to the formal business of the meeting. The ordinary business is to consider the financial statements and reports.
The annual report for the financial period ended 30th of June 2024, together with the director's report, auditor's report, and the sustainability report, was sent to all members who requested a copy on the 18th of October, 2024. Any comments or questions to the annual accounts and reports? Okay. As there are no comments or questions on that, we'll move through to the next items of business, which are resolutions one, two, three, four, and five. Items one to four are ordinary resolutions. Five is a special resolution. The results of all these votes are now going to be displayed on the screen behind me. They have been flicked through. As such, and as we're not going to step through those, we'll now conduct a poll. Computershare, if you'd like to fill out your forms and pass them through to. Did you want mine? Okay. Why don't you get those?
Four? Okay. Oh, that's the signature. There we go.
It's a good signature.
Thanks.
You always want to flag that.
Looks different every time. Depends how much of them you're using.
Depends which country you're in.
If anyone needs more time, please raise your hand. Nope. Thank you. There we go. Okay. Final resolutions of the final results of the resolution will be announced to the ASX later today. There being no more further formal business, I declare the AGM closed at 11:04 A.M. Thank you for attending, and we'll move to Aaron's presentation of the year in review.
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, John.
All right. Thank you for attending. You can hear me okay down there? Yeah. I can't tell whether this is on or not. Presumably, anyone online, if there is anyone online, you can hear as well. Thanks for attending. The AGM, in my view, is a good time to reflect on what we've achieved as a company over the past 12 months and put some targets out for the next 12 months. I'll take you through those achievements and those targets in this presentation. First, the safety, though. Over FY 2024, and you will have seen this in our disclosures, the total recordable injury frequency rate fell to 3.2 during that FY 2024 year. That was a very pleasing outcome, but it has started to creep up recently, though.
As you will have seen from our quarterly reports, and where I must say, we report very openly about our safety incidents, probably more openly than a lot of companies. There have been some recent near misses that have given us some real areas for concern. To lift our safety culture to the next level, we've recently engaged external specialist help and have embarked on a series of feedback sessions to design employee training programs across the entire company from top to bottom with a focus on culture and understanding our critical risks. We're building a great company. A company that I'm proud of and a company I believe that you can be proud of too as shareholders. We're building a great company. Building a great company is about attracting great people and retaining those people. I've introduced you to the management team in the past.
Those of you who have attended the AGM before will have met Audrey Ferguson, our Company Secretary and General Counsel, Ben McEnerney at the front, our Eloise General Manager looks after Eloise, Mike Frame, our Chief Financial Officer, Seb Casey, heads up people and safety, Mike Taylor at the back, heads up exploration, and Monika Eisenlohr works with Mike in the exploration division. You won't have met two new recruits. So for the first time this year appearing before you, Tim Benfield, our Chief Operating Officer, and Duncan Bristow, right at the back, our Business Development and Investor Relations Manager. Both great new hires. Tim started in January this year, and he's harnessed and given direction to the Jericho development and the Eloise expansion. He's also started to build a great development team to complement the great operations team that we already have at Eloise.
Duncan started in July, and you can safely assume that my reasoning for hiring a Business Development Manager is to support a renewed focus on inorganic growth. The M&A and the junior market is presenting many opportunities for us to review, as you'd expect, but so far none of these opportunities have met our primary hurdle, our primary acquisition hurdle of improving the average asset quality of the company. We'll continue to look, though. Our reputation as an employer and also, importantly, just as importantly, our reputation in the community has also improved significantly over the past 12 months. We are not as well funded as the big guys in our region.
That's Glencore, Harmony, Evolution, but we are becoming well known and well regarded because of the positive involvement we have in the region through participation, through participation in local events, and through lending a hand to our neighbors when it is most needed. There is no better example than our recent firefighting assistance to a local landholder whose homestead was at risk of being destroyed by bushfire. We're part of the community. Our reputation is important as we grow because we'll need community support. For example, we didn't receive a single objection to the Jericho Mining Lease approval that was granted in May this year. It was a very quick approval as a result of the support that we have from local landholders, traditional landowners, and the local council.
The environmental permitting process, and we've got a lot of environmental permits ahead of us this year, and that's why I've talked to a little bit of it and put some nice pictures up for you to look at in the meantime. The environmental permitting process in Queensland is problematic. It's overly complex and challenging to navigate. It requires specialist consultants to interpret, and even the regulators have trouble consistently applying the regulations. This is exacerbated by the regulator's environmental department being critically under-resourced, resulting in delayed action and decision-making. So reputation is important, engagement is important, and a true commitment to best practice is important. We're building on an already good reputation with the Queensland Government Department of Environment, Tourism, Science, and Innovation. That's the department. They're known better by their acronym, fortunately. The acronym is DETSI.
So we have regular and open engagement with them, and we're committed to best practice. We released our sustainability report, which I hope you saw, with our FY 2024 annual report in October this year. It reports on our progress and achievements against our environmental sustainability and governance strategies and also sets out, wow, joined by royalty. Welcome, boys. Welcome. Sorry, I'm thrown now. It sets out our environmental sustainability and governance strategies and also sets out the sustainability commitments that we've proactively set for ourselves over the next two to three years. Being proactive puts us in a strong position as we engage with DETSI and finalize the environmental permits required to develop the Jericho mine and finalize the Eloise processing plant. Now, I have and I can sort of take you through that, but I wouldn't do that. It's boring. It's cumbersome.
But to try to do it quickly and just to try to give you the insight so that you understand what we'll provide you with updates on during the quarter and give you each quarter. So I won't go through each of these permits in detail, but I just want to reassure you that there is no hurdle we've got ahead of us that's insurmountable. Quite the opposite. These are simple, straightforward hurdles. We've got a Jericho site-specific EA that's in front of DETSI at the moment, and we've had feedback working through that. We've got an Eloise EA amendment for the disposal of Jericho waste rock and water at Eloise. Straightforward. The Jericho underground water impact report will go in. Then we've got the Eloise EA amendment for the plant expansion. Then we've got the Eloise EA amendment for acceptance of Jericho ore and tailings.
And then we've got the major Eloise EA amendment for raising of TD5. When I throw them at you, it seems like there's a lot, and there is a lot. It's cumbersome. It's laborious. But it's difficult to take you through each of those and give you precise dates on when we'll submit and when we'll get approvals. Other than there is no critical. None of those approvals are on our critical path. And the wording to watch for in our quarterlies, and we'll provide this wording, and it's been in the last two, if not three quarterlies, the receipt of approvals is currently not expected to cause any delay to Jericho developmental production. That's the easy, yeah, that's the bottom line. We give you that summary every quarter, and I'm confident that we'll be providing that to you every quarter.
But for those of you who wonder about the approvals process we have ahead of us, it's not straightforward, but it's not problematic. Now, to the G of ESG, governance. We have a great board. We have a board with the right skills and experience for a growth company and good-looking. They have a great depth of experience in the mining sector. They are directors who have built mines, built companies before, and they also have experience in the equity capital markets. We have a market-savvy board, and I think that that is a distinguishing feature. I can't help myself but compare our board to the supposedly experienced, diverse, and independent board at Mineral Resources, a board that ticked all the boxes on board diversity and independence but failed to act with diversity or independence.
We have a great board with the right skills and experience for a growth company and the integrity and acumen to guide this company for the benefit of all shareholders. Our board composition doesn't currently tick every governance box. Independence, technically, is not yet ticked, but we will improve our board diversity and independence over time as we grow the company. On this slide, I should also talk about the share price, share price performance. To be the same price as we were a year ago is as disappointing to me personally as I'm sure it is to you as shareholders. I don't believe that the current share price is a fair reflection of the value of AIC Mines or its prospects. The company is in a much stronger position than it was a year ago. We're actually in the strongest position we've ever been in.
The weak share price, I believe, is a reflection of market sentiment being driven by short-term, flat to negative view of the copper price. I think we are seeing the bottom of the copper price. I'm calling it now, and that we won't see any further weakness. Now is a good time to be buying copper stocks, AIC Mines in particular, and let me now take you through why. Eloise produced 13,412 tonnes of copper concentrate at an all-in sustaining cost of AUD 5.15 a pound, as Josef provided in his opening remarks. We beat guidance. This is in FY 2024. We beat guidance. It was a 27% increase in production and 8% reduction in cost from the prior year. It was a record under AIC Mines ownership, and it was the highest annual production record recorded at Eloise since 2017. FY 2024 was a great year.
We've transformed Eloise from a hand-to-mouth operation that was expected to close in 2023 to a great little project that is now producing free cash flow, has a four-year reserve life, and a 10-year resource life, and importantly, a big future ahead of it as we develop the nearby Jericho deposit and expand the Eloise processing facility. Our FY 2025 production target, our cautious FY 2025 production target, is 12,500 tonnes of copper and 5,000 ounces of gold in con at an all-in sustaining cost of AUD 5.25 a pound. Very happy to say, and for those of you who had a quick look at announcements this morning, we're off to a cracking start. We're off to a great start this year in the first four months. So we've updated the market today with essentially October results on the back of our great September quarter.
In the first four months of FY 2025, Eloise has already produced 4,586 tonnes of copper in con at an all-in sustaining cost of AUD 4.75, which is well ahead of where it needs to be to achieve its FY 2025 full-year target. Well ahead. Thank you, Ben. Any further questions? We'll go straight to Ben. Now I'm really worried. Costs are looking good. Recent tenders at $4.75, costs are looking great. Costs are looking good. Recent tenders for mining and processing consumables have shown renewed competitiveness in the market and an easing of the rampant cost inflation experienced over the past two to three years. The diesel price has fallen, and benchmark copper treatment charges and refining charges, TCRCs, are expected to fall from the current $80 a tonne, $0.08 per pound, to below $40 a tonne and $0.04 a pound from January.
This would represent just falling to 40.04, that would represent a AUD 0.16 per pound saving to us on our AISC from that period forward. So it's material. And you know where we—and you will have heard on our September quarterly—we're expecting benchmark as of January to come in around 40.04. We're hearing better. The current negotiations, whisperings coming out of that suggest even lower. That'll be a great outcome. We released our updated reserve and resource position as at 31 December 2023. Copper contained in mineral resources increased by 49% and in ore reserves by 40% year -on -year. A fantastic outcome, testament to the impressive ore bodies that we're working with and the impressive geologists that we employ. Mike and Monika at the back of the room. The resource base we now have provides a robust long-term outlook for the Eloise project.
It now has a resource base larger than at any time in its 30-year history. The potential to expand resources and reserves remains excellent. Recent drilling completed in the upper levels and at Lens 6 at Eloise and at the Matilda Shoot and at the northern end of Jericho provides confidence that mineral resources and ore reserves will again be increased this year. During the year, we made the decision to access Jericho via a three-kilometer underground link drive directly from Eloise. We commenced the link drive in June. The cost and time to develop the link drive is similar to the original plan to access Jericho via boxcut and then truck ore overland back to Eloise. The link drive, though, is a much better option due to its soft benefits. It will have a lower overall mine operating cost.
It will allow for rapid development of any future discoveries along strike, such as the Swagman deposit that you've seen we discovered in September last year. It isn't prone to wet season, flooding, or delays, and it is having a lower potential impact on the environment and the local stakeholders, the local landowners. Good progress is being made on the Jericho link drive. That's the other new news released today. We're just over four months into a 24-month journey on the link drive. It's progressed 480 m of its 3,000 m and is on schedule and on budget. Raise boring of the first ventilation shaft has been completed, and we're currently lining the shaft ready to install the exhaust fans next month. Preparation for the second vent shaft is underway. We've already completed the portal excavation down to 26 m. We're now backfilling that with cement.
We learned a few lessons, though, from shaft one that we will apply to shaft two and expect it to progress quickly as a result. So very positive news there on Jericho development. The real positive news, though, on Jericho is exploration completed this year hasn't been able to define the extents of the Jericho mineralization. It's been far more successful than we had expected. Mineralization has now been intersected over 5 km of strike length from Jericho south all the way through to Swagman, five kilometers, and still remains open along strike and clearly at depth. This leads to the obvious question: can we mine Jericho at a higher rate than the 600,000 tonnes per annum? And is an expansion of the Eloise processing plant to 1.1 million tonnes big enough? A number of shareholders, people have been asking us that question.
We're now trying to answer it for you. The link drive to Jericho, and I'll talk more about it in a second. The link drive to Jericho is expected to reach first development ore in June 2026. Mining then ramps up over a further 12 months to achieve a full production rate of 600,000 tonnes per annum from June 2027. So within that timeframe, we need to expand the current processing plant from 700,000 tonnes to 1.1 million tonnes per annum throughput. That lifts annual copper productions at over 20,000 tonnes. We have recently finalized the flow sheet and the plant layout for that expansion to 1.1 million tonnes per annum. The flow sheet and plant layout is designed to, sorry to read out the bullet points, but the design, the aim of the design is to minimize operational impacts to Eloise during construction.
We'll continue on merrily with our current 600,000 tonnes-650,000 tonnes per annum. It's designed to minimize process plant downtime during commissioning, cut over very quickly, and ensure that existing non-processing infrastructure is unaffected by the layout. To some degree, we've managed to do that. The estimated capital cost is AUD 60 million for that plant. However, that might now change as we consider ensuring the expansion of 1.1 million tonnes per annum is completed so that a second stage expansion progressively to 1.5 million tonnes per annum is straightforward. We're also identifying improvement opportunities in the current plant that are best completed as part of the expansion when those teams are on site. We'd be mad not to do them over the next 18-24 months rather than progressively over a longer timeframe. We're proceeding with an EPC, engineer, procure, construct, contractor delivery strategy.
Tender documents are due to be issued early in the new year. We continue to have banks and off-takers, concentrate off-takers who are very keen to fund the expansion. Too keen, almost. As I noted earlier, the combined Eloise region mineral resources now total 22.9 million tonnes. This resource base provides a robust long-term outlook for the Eloise project. This puts the project in an enviable position. Exploration can now focus on transformational discovery rather than just resource replacement. Now, I think there's a few of you in the room who I have explained this to in the past. For those of you who haven't, it's quite a shift in how we're exploring at the moment. Historically, or over the past couple of years, we've been exploring for more resources to build the resource base at Eloise, Eloise Jericho regional.
But now at 22.9 million tonnes, that resource, 22.9 million tonnes at 2.1% copper, 0.5 grams per tonne gold, is big, is big enough. That's a 20-year resource life. So what we actually need now, though, is high grade that will displace ore so that we get straight into 3%, 4% ore. Eloise has produced 4% ore in the past. It is producing some nice ore at the moment. So we need, if we can find higher grade ore, that'll displace and make a difference to us now. Or if we can find a large, something that's clearly large, that tells us now that a bigger expansion is warranted. So that's the focus on those transformational discoveries. And so we've put bigger funding in place. Gated funding of AUD 7 million has been allocated for this financial year, FY 2025. That's about double what we've spent in the past.
That'll see 10 targets tested, 20,000 meters of drilling completed. What you'll see, though, is you might see us turn over projects quickly. You might see us get good results, but not follow them up. Don't be confused. That's not negative that we're not following those up. We're parking those, and we're rapidly, aggressively, quickly trying to find those + 2%, + 10 million tonne type deposits. If we find something that's more of the same, more 2 million tonnes, more 2 million tonnes to 5 million tonne deposits, we'll move on quickly. They're in the bank. We'll come back to them later. What we need is that high.
So that's the way to. I'm just saying, that's the way to interpret our results moving forward and how we will put a lot of names to you and just keep chunking forward as quickly as we can. To wrap up, AIC Mines has transformed Eloise into a reliable mine with a robust 10-year outlook. We're adding value through development of Jericho and expansion at Eloise, further transforming Eloise into a long-life mine of meaningful size. Eloise will be a better mine in five years' time than it is today. It will have higher production at lower cost, and it will have a longer reserve life at that point. That's actually pretty special when you consider, when you think that through. There are very few mines that you could say that about today. Eloise will be a better mine in five years' time than it is today. Thank you.
That concludes my presentation, and happy to take questions. Questions?
Just on Swagman.
Could we just do it with the microphone?
Just on Swagman. Have you drilled from the underground to better scope that out?
Yeah, we're not there yet. So Swagman's about roughly halfway along. So as soon as we get there, there's a vent shaft nicely placed there. We'll put the drill platform in and do it from underground. So that's 12 months away before we get stuck into that. But good question, because we will do it from underground. We're probably not, we might put another hole into it. We're not going to do a lot from surface because what we found was grade's getting better at depth, and so it's better drilled from underground. Prohibitively expensive to drill it from surface.
Off easy.
Thank you.
Okay, that's good. Yeah, I'll close my bit.
All right, that's all we have for today then. Thank you for.