Good day to all attendees, morning, afternoon or evening. We apologize for the short delay in starting this webinar. Welcome to the Aeris Resources October Quarter Call and Presentation. Aeris's Executive Chairman, André Labuschagne, will be making a short presentation, after which there will be time for questions. Before we get started, you will automatically be muted during the presentation. This will avoid any background noise. We will take questions at the end. If you wish for our moderators to read your question, please type them publicly using the Q&A. If you want to ask a question, please use the Raise Hand function. I'll now hand over to André Labuschagne, the Executive Chairman of Aeris Resources. Andre.
Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Aeris Resources First Quarter FY 2022 Activities Report Presentation. My apologies for the late start. Just having a bit of a look at FY 2022 and the highlights as it was announced in the annual report this week. As most of you on this call will know, it was a spectacular year for us in FY 2022. The production results were as expected from the mines. The Constellation deposit kept on growing, and it's still looking very, very good. We'll talk a bit more about that. On the balance sheet, every single area in the balance sheet has improved, including by the end of July, we were debt-free and we had AUD 97 million in the bank.
Now, what FY 2021 has set us up to do is actually to look at how do we grow this business further. It will turn Tritton from a surviving business to a growth business. It will keep on focusing on extending the life at Cracow, but most importantly, it's all about creating that additional life as we move this business forward. Getting to the first quarter results at Cracow, they did 4,691 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of AUD 1,951, in line with our guidance. The monthly throughput has achieved a record tons in August. That's an annualized throughput of 700,000 tons, which historically this mine has done about 550-570.
Our aim, as we would have discussed before, was as we get into Cracow, it's all about how do we extend the life, how do we put more tons through the process plant. The guys has done an amazing job to push that to over 58,000 tons in August. As we would have spoken before in FY 2021, we now have commissioned the tailings storage facility number two at Cracow, and it's actually looking really, really good. The team has delivered on budget and on time, delivering that storage facility. On the exploration side, we still got the 3 rigs going underground. We're now focusing on surface drilling with two rigs drilling on surface.
We'll talk a bit more in the presentation, but it's all about creating that extended underground life of mine, but also starting to look at other projects to bring them forward into the production plan. Tritton had a below average production for the first quarter at 4,534 tons. It was not significantly below our internal budget, so it's always budgeted to be a soft quarter at all-in sustaining cost of $473 per pound. As I said earlier, Tritton is moving into a growth phase, and we'll put AUD 50 million into developing three new projects and new sources at Tritton. We have started Avoca Tank. We'll talk a little bit more about that. Constellation keeps on extending. There's now a strike extended over 300 meters or up to 300 meters.
We're now moving back into the greenfield exploration and really focusing on that northern part of the tenement package. The closing cash balance at a corporate level was AUD 75 million. PAG has been repaid, and after nine years, we're debt-free, and we would have talked about in the last quarter, but that was an amazing outcome. We've now got new facilities in place with ANZ, who's now our primary banker, going forward. On the ESG side, safety, we had 1 lost time injury for the quarter at Cracow. One of the employees received minor burns, but he was back at work and no further issues. We had zero lost time injury at Tritton, and as you can see, we're slowly clawing back that injury frequency rate. There was no environmental incidents.
On the COVID side, we have got all the measures in place. We have seen, specifically at Tritton, that it did impact on the production and the manning levels at Tritton with the lockdowns in New South Wales. That is now being managed, but we are working through all the challenges, specifically at Tritton around COVID. We are very proud to have released yesterday our first sustainability report. That demonstrates Aeris' commitment to transparency, integrity, and a sustainable performance. That is how we pride ourself and how we run our business, how we earn our license to operate, and really has put our commitment in to how do we see the future at a sustainability level. It is on our website. It has been released yesterday. Please feel free to read it and any feedback is welcome.
We now will report on that on annual basis, and we'll show progress on what we're doing on all the different levels in our sustainability of the business. Getting to the bit more details into the highlights for Tritton. Production was lower than planned. You can see there's lower tonnes and grade. The tonnes was mainly impacted by COVID restrictions following availability of mining levels, but the grade was impacted due to lower grade being mined than what was expected. We did do a grade reconciliation investigation into it. We now understand where the lower grades are coming from, and we have adjusted the plan accordingly, going forward for the rest of this financial year. Development of Avoca Tank has commenced. You will see some photos.
We have changed our all-in sustaining cost guidance by 15 cents, and it's all due to the sea freight rates. Eighteen months ago, we would have paid $35 a tonne for concentrate freight. Currently, it's close to $100 a tonne, and we don't see in the short term a big drawback on those rates. That impacts around 15 cents a pound or around $5 million-$6 million in cash in additional rates. We kept our production forecast at 21-22, but we have, as I just said, increased all-in sustaining costs. At Cracow, production was in line with the previous quarter, a little bit more tonnes, lower grade. But was mainly impacted by grade. It was all due to mining sequence, and it's all come down to when we take certain high-grade and low-grade stopes out.
Those forecasts for both costs and guidance remain in place for FY 2022. Looking in a bit more detail at Tritton. I think this is an important slide which we're trying to get across to the market to show the future of Tritton. As I said, Tritton is moving from a survival mine to a growth mine. Where we sit today, we're currently mining at Tritton and Murrawombie underground mines. We just started Avoca Tank. We started Budgerygar. You can see when those operations get into the blue, that's when they get into production. Over the next two years, both Tritton and Murrawombie will start to slow down. In that period, we bring into production Tritton, Budgerygar, Avoca Tank and Murrawombie open pit. We'll finish off exploration of Constellation and bring that into production.
The same with Courageous and Budgerygar. The key takeaway on this slide is, as Tritton and Murrawombie drops off, better quality, high grade production profiles will come into production. By the end of FY 2026, there will be five operations in production with substantial life and substantially better grades we're going to be mining. As I said, if you look at Tritton, it's a transformation. It's going to a growth phase. We're investing capital now. As I said, this year, we'll invest AUD 50 million. All those projects as they come online will create a substantial improved life and better quality tonnes for Tritton. This is just a few pictures of Avoca Tank. The Avoca Tank decline is going into an old decline. The work has started.
That's a photo of the first cut taken earlier this week or actually end of last week. We see first production coming out of Avoca Tank in Q4 , FY 2023. Between now and then, it's all about development and getting it ready. When you look at Constellation, you all would have seen these slides quite a few times. This is just over the last 12 months, just getting bigger and better. We now got a clear 850-meter down plunge identified. There's another 300 meters identified through EM plates. We will draw holes through those EM plates and test them down plunge. There's a clear oxide and a transition ore bodies. You can see some of those results from the RC drilling, which we've done.
We've now done 103 assays has been received back. You can look at some of the latest ones, 48.7 meters at 2.5% copper + 1.2 gold. That is just spectacular results. We now will put a-- we're now drilling that to a targeting a resource, a maiden resource by the December quarter. Trying to start to get the concept. We've launched a concept study for the development of Constellation, starting off with an open pit going underground. Within the next 12 months, we'll have a clear plan on exactly how that will be mined and coming into production. If you look at that previous slide I put up, the target is to have this into production within a two-year timeframe from where we are today.
You look at Budgerygar, which is the one we also started. The drilling there is going really well. You can see some of the results. Really good grades coming out of that. By quarter end, we had 33 resource definition holes drilled to a 40 by 40 spacing to get it to an Indicated Mineral Resource. We expect mining to produce ore tonnes in quarter four, FY 2022. Once again, as Tritton goes deeper and the grade drops, starting to drop off, we bring in these higher grade, lower cost tonnes into production from Budgerygar. Murrawombie, as always, kept on delivering. We're now testing the hanging wall at Murrawombie. We're drilling that to a 40 by 40 meter spacing as well to get it into Indicated Mineral Resource.
You can see there some really good results, 25 meters at 2.3% copper, with a six-meter true thickness. That is all sort of drilling ahead of us, trying to see how far we can extend Murrawombie. We're always trying to extend Murrawombie as far as we can and keep on drilling it out. It's one of those deposits which we mine and drill nearly only about six to 12 months ahead of ourself. At this stage, we are planning to bring in the Morwong open pit as well into production in the next 12 months. We go and have a look at Cracow. As I said, we are pushing that multi to target of 650. The team at the mine did an annualized production.
If you take August and annualize it at 700,000, so 650 is very achievable. The focus there is how do we improve the near mine production, keep the drilling. We've got three drill rigs going underground. We've allocated AUD 9 million budget in FY 2022 to extending those near mine targets. A lot of priority has now moved on to look at Ballymore and Boughyard, to see how does the, we call it, the new space look and prioritizing those targets to bring them in. We have also started drilling at Golden Plateau, which is a deposit which has been mined before, very large deposit.
The idea now is to bring Roses Pride into production as quickly as we can within this financial year, but also starting to look at how do we get Golden Plateau into production within the next 12-24 months as we move forward with the Cracow plan. You've seen this slide quite a few times. This is all just the different areas we're testing. All the ones in red is where we're drilling. All the ones in black is where we will still test. Roses Pride on the right-hand side, that will now become part of the production plan for this financial year, and it's all about bringing in and bringing forward some of those tons into the production.
Golden Plateau, which you can see on the top of that slide, again, it's an old open pit with underground potential extensions, and there's a lot of work being done on exploration on that deposit. This is an example of Roses Pride, the RC drilling. You can see some of those results, four meters at five grams a ton. We're getting it ready so we can bring that into production in FY 2022. As we always said, you know, you've got to look at Cracow just beyond the current working. The Western field is where we're currently working. Now that Western field is a 2 million ounce system. The Cracow Southwest has got a potential analog towards that, so that has been prioritized.
Ballymore and Boughyard is currently under investigation, and work has been done to start drilling within those areas. We are focusing, keep the focus on the greenfield exploration or the new space, as we call it, going forward. At a corporate level, the cash has gone down from usable and cash and receivables, AUD 105 million to AUD 75 million. That was planned. Only AUD 5 million of that was not planned. Bulk of that is on the back of big capital spend happening in the business. We have repaid debt with cash, which we had. We also had the final payment for the Cracow acquisition for the stamp duty, which was AUD 4 million. The cash going down is not unexpected.
AUD 5 million of that is on the back of the production at Tritton, but there was also quite a significant amount of concentrate at the port which is not accounted for in a way in the system. Hedging currently, we've got about 1,650 tons per quarter hedged, being between $11,900 and $12,900 a ton. So it's currently slightly below the current copper price, but it's still within a very good close range, but it's only about 25%-30% of the production on a monthly basis. On the debt side, as I said, PAG has been repaid in July.
We now got ANZ as our primary banker, with our AUD 20 million working cap facility and then a AUD 35 million contingent instrument facility, which is purely for the use of environmental bonds, specifically for Tritton and Cracow. As always, we are focusing on M&A. We always said we wanna grow this business further. We are looking for copper gold. We're looking specifically in Australia at this point in time. We're happy to go offshore, but it's a risk reward thing for us. We are operators in essence, so we're always looking for producing assets first, development-ready assets second, and then if there's some bolt-on assets to the current operations. We will be looking, and we will be trying to see what's available to keep growing this business beyond just the current two assets.
That was always a clear strategy from us, going forward in the business. I guess in summary, FY 2021 we talked about it was a great year. FY 2022, first quarter was a bit disappointing for Tritton, but we're still very confident that we'll achieve the production guidance. We have changed the cost guidance a little, but that's purely driven by uncontrolled exchange rates. We are very excited about the transformation from survival to growth at Tritton and the way we set up for it. Of course, exploration in this year between the two mines, spend AUD 28 million in exploration just on the two assets. I guess from our point of view, great start, disappointing for where we start off with Tritton, but it's not a difficult situation.
We're still achieving the forecasting guidance and looking forward to FY 2022, where we'll start to see the benefits of the growth of Tritton going forward. Thank you very much.