In 2026, we produced 42,000 tons of copper equivalent production. Out of our Tritton copper mine, we did about 23,000 tons of copper metal, and in Cracow, our gold mine, we produced around 41,000 ounces of gold. Those are the two operating assets. We've got two development projects. One is the old Jaguar copper zinc mine in Western Australia and the Stockman project in Victoria. Both of those are projects which can add future production to the portfolio. As you will see through the presentation, we've invested in FY 2026, significant money into exploration with also the success on the back of that exploration will be clear when we go through some of the slides as we present the results. That has created us, and with an acquisition, we bought Peel Mining, which closed in 1 July.
Peel Mining, with a combination of the exploration, is really looking at Tritton adding significant life and reserves and resources to their Tritton mine life. Sort of just touching base. In the beginning of FY 2026, we said this is a plan for FY 2026. At Tritton, it's about operational delivery. It was the Murrawombie Pit coming into production and close out. Although we had some delays in the December quarter, Murrawombie Pit is now in full production and will finish off in November. We wanted to make sure we start Constellation on time, and we have brought some of the capital works earlier to ensure the timely start of Constellation.
Over the group, we spent about AUD 25 million in exploration, and it all was for resource extensions, and we were successful at both Tritton and Cracow extending those resources, and for both of those added significant potential mine life, as you'll see as we go through more slides. We sold the non-core assets. That was already done in quarter three. At the Jaguar mine, we have now reduced the care and maintenance to the bare minimum. We did test the eight base metal targets, and we're awaiting the results of those, and then we'll make a decision on what's the best way forward. The Stockman feasibility study, although we said we wanted to get it out in FY 2026, it will come out in the first half FY 2027.
For those who've been around, we have repaid the debt, so we went from AUD 40 million debt to zero debt.
We sold the non-core assets, and we did put some gold hedging in place, but that whole gold hedging has now rolled off end of June, so currently there's no hedging in the group. What did that mean for the results? As I said earlier, we produced 42,000 tons copper equivalent. Tritton had a 19% improvement on copper production year-on-year. Cracow was stable. The key takeaways of the financials, in my view, is an EBITDA of AUD 285 million, which is a 78% increase year-on-year, and then cash receivables, a 300% increase year-on-year. Although some of it is a capital raise, but still really good operating cash flows and financial performance in the business in FY 2026. For the June quarter, you can see Tritton and Cracow delivered about AUD 120 million operating cash.
We have put quite a bit of money into exploration, both for capital development, but also a significant amount of that is for the last bit of the Murrawombie Pit capital. There's the other bits and pieces, including finance and other, which are interest and other expenses. Closing the year with AUD 165 million available cash as at end June. If you look at the year-to-date, AUD 350 million operating cash flow from the operations. Significant improvement year-on-year. Capital, quite a big number, but it is capital development predominantly from both the underground mines and also the Murrawombie strip, which is about AUD 100 million of that AUD 180 million. Once again, the improvement in the operations both obviously helped by commodity prices, but also them achieving significant improved production year-on-year out of the two mines. Touching on Tritton in a bit more detail.
We have put quite a bit of information out in Tritton in the last few weeks. One was the reserve resource update, and that was, in my view, a spectacular result. We went from December 2024 at 2.4 million tons in reserves, which is not even two years in reserves, to 10 million tons in reserve. You'll see in the slides, got a significant opportunity to improve. So you go from not even two years of reserves to over five years of reserves is making a big difference. Although some of it is through the acquisition of the Peel assets, specifically Mallee Bull, but bulk of it is through the consolidation of underground reserves being declared. You'll see there is still significant upside for all these. You look at this slide where the blue is indicating the resource currently on all those assets.
The brown is the current declared reserves. What we've seen, for example, so far at Constellation, everything which has been in the resource in the mining area where mining has turned into a reserve, it's just a lack of drilling and further work, which is the reason why it hasn't converted. Mallee Bull, there's significant opportunity to improve, and it's Avoca Tank. Very small reserve. You'll see in the slides coming up, Avoca Tank is actually bigger as we go deeper. So a lot of that resource will convert to reserve through the draw program we're putting in place for FY 2027. The same for Budgerygar. There's been a significant resource update or upgrade in this latest results. The drilling program will improve that reserve position in any way in FY 2027.
Overall, I think for where we were and where we are now, and the amount of money we spend on exploration, and also the M&A transaction, has really set Tritton up for this 10-year mine plan. Once we see we get Mallee Bull and Constellation into full production, we clearly see a potential for Tritton to go to 30,000 tons and a significant life as we move forward. Looking at the quarter results, it was improvement quarter-on-quarter, and the mill were running at 1.8 million tons in quarter four, so it's at mill nameplate capacity. We did add a few days where we had crusher challenges and mill challenges, so it even can do better. It's the first time in a very long time where that mill was running at capacity, and that's because of the ore tons delivered from Murrawombie Pit.
We ran at 1.8 million tons, we still had over 200,000 tons of stockpiles from the Murrawombie Pit production. I think a key thing we're missing in all of this is the underground mines actually outperformed on expectations, and that was all to do with, we knew that we lost time at the Murrawombie Pit. The team looked at any and all opportunities to make some of that shortfall up through underground mines. They produced over 2,000 tons of copper metal additional to what they planned to do. Overall, the underground team has shown that they can really step up and give us what we're looking for. We were very happy with that as an outcome. On the operating costs and the capital. Capital was slightly higher.
We already said in the third quarter, we are bringing forward some capital for Constellation to ensure an early start. There were some additional tons or waste tons through the Murrawombie Pit when we had the wall failure. Also an accounting readjustment resulted in additional capital for Murrawombie Pit. We talked about exploration success, and I'll show you a few more slides. Clearly, for Tritton, it was a big step up, and the underground mines once again showed that they can deliver when it's expected. This is all of the results from the drilling. As I said earlier, we spent significant amount of money on exploration. The slide on the left-hand side, that's the results from the December 2024 reserve resource update. That's the size of Avoca Tank when we started mining it.
Where we are, you can see we already mined more than what was in the original resource, the drilling down below Avoca Tank is the exciting bit where you can see potentially that resource is now doubled in strike length, and it's still open and still continuing. A drilling program will define that into a reserve in FY 2027. We are keeping the development going to ensure that we can access those tons in FY 2028 as we move forward with the Avoca Tank. The other one is Budgerygar. You can see once again on the left-hand side, that's when we started Budgerygar and the size of the resource. Since then, we've mined most of that. We also added, and drilling has added significant additional resources at Budgerygar, and there's no reason why we don't believe that it continues at depth. It's actually wider and thicker than previously expected.
It is a better resource in our view than what was expected when we started drilling. It just shows you in the Tritton assets, the more you drill, the more you find. Every single one of the mines ever mined or discovered is still open at depth. Nothing is closed off. Tritton is all ready. We've got ore down to 1,300 meters already, and it's still open, and we're still getting high-grade intersections at Tritton at depth. This is just a few images of Constellation. As I said, we started early. We already most of that trench for infrastructure, for water, and comms is now done. The roadworks have started. The office is set up. The mining lease was granted last week. Within the next week, the trucks was already on the go line.
We're putting the diggers together, and we will start as soon as we can to start with the pre-strip, with the aim of having first ore on Constellation in quarter three to the mill. When you look at Cracow, as it's been for the last probably two or three years, consistently producing on cost and capital, and production was in line with the plan, delivering 10,500 ounces, and basically 41,000 ounces in line with plan for FY 2026. The guidance has been met and all. The key focus there is obviously Golden Plateau. We talked about it a lot. That is where we see the potential significant extension of mine life. Through the development of Golden Plateau. The drilling we're doing is really confirming historical data to make sure we can use those old data in mine planning.
You can see some of those results, 40 meters at 9 gram a ton, 6.7 at 5. Really good grade intersections. It is a mine which was mined in the 1930s at 10 gram a ton. Anything less was sort of left behind. In the 1980s, as you can see in that image, there was an open pit over the top. They mined 2.5 million tons out of that at around 4.5 gram a ton. Significant grades. We don't expect necessarily to see the same grades. We are now modeling an open pit and underground option on the back of the drilling we're seeing. We will communicate those results and Mineral Resource update in this half with the aim of starting this mine in FY 2028, if everything comes together.
On the project side, we have now put Jag into the lowest care and maintenance costs. We drilled eight holes. They are in for tests. We're waiting for the assays to come back. We also did downhole EM in all eight of them to ensure that we look around. Once we get those results back, we will decide on the best way forward for Jag in terms of base metal drilling. Also one of the big opportunities we keep on talking about is the gold exploration on the tenement package. There's 62 kilometers of gold anomalies. Never really been tested between two of the big gold miners in the region. We see a significant potential and option value for gold in the Jag tenement package. On Stockman, we're busy finalizing the feasibility study.
We will bring it out within this half, and communicate that to the market once it's in place. Then we'll decide on what's the best way forward for Stockman in terms of final feasibility study and financing options. What's ahead of us for FY 2027? We will bring out our guidance next week. The clear focus, of course, for us is Murrawombie Pit will finish off in November or in quarter two. There will be over a million tons on stockpile once it's done. Constellation will be in production by quarter three. We already did the Reserve and Resource update, including the Peel assets, and we will later this year, within the next few months, release a five to 10 year with the aim of putting a 10-year mine plan out for Tritton. At Cracow, Golden Plateau is critical for us.
Not critical, but it's a key operational value for us. We will get ready to drill the southern vein field, which is purely an exploration, greenfields exploration. It is a funny one. three years ago or four years ago, we debated do we lift the tailings dam or not? We lift the tailings dam. Now it's the third lift already, because everything just keeps on extending as expected at Cracow. We'll always review the portfolio. We will continue to see how we get best value out of our assets. We talked about Jaguar, we talked about Stockman. On the exploration side, we will always keep drilling the western vein field, targeting that less than 50,000 ounces as we extend the western vein field.
Drilling of Golden Plateau will finish off in the next few months. Then we'll bring that study out. At Tritton, Constellation was a greenfields discovery we made four or five years, probably now more than that, probably six years ago. The team there still believes that there's a lot of greenfields exploration opportunities. We've restructured the business to clearly focus on greenfields exploration and then brownfields as a separate team. The greenfields team are re-looking at the whole region, the structures, and identifying new targets for us to test on the greenfields exploration side. On Jag, we are proposing to do some gold drilling as well in this financial year. As we all know, there's big capital management programs coming on with what we're doing with Constellation start.
Clearly for us, capital management is the key focus for us in FY 2027 as part of the implementation of the FY 2027 plan. I guess that sort of summarize it. I think summarizing FY 2026, it was a very successful year. The company's in the best position it's been in my time with the company, which is over 12 years. Strong balance sheet. We're ready to fund the growth internally. As we bring these bigger assets online at Tritton with Constellation and Mallee Bull and the current increases we see in the current mines, clearly there's a great future for Tritton. Cracow has never disappointed. It always continue to grow, find more. Golden Plateau might just be the asset which can put you in that 5 to 10-year life of mine horizon, which it really never had.
It always had about two years in reserves and nothing more, but always replaced it. The company really looking forward to FY 2027, getting Constellation up and running, keep the balance sheet strong and deliver results from the operating mines and show the market the value of the projects in the business. That sort of summarize that. We'll take some questions. I've got hands up here from David Coates. David, I'll put you up. Can you hear me, David? There you go. Let's try that. Can you hear me?
Can you hear me now?
Yeah, I can hear you.
Excellent. Thanks, André. Thanks for the presentation this morning and rounding out that it's been a pretty transformational year, particularly through Tritton. Well done. Couple of questions from me. Just on at Tritton, C1 cash costs very handily dropped below the AUD 4 a pound mark, which was great to see. Can you just run us through what the key drivers are of that reduced cost? Is it just volume, or are there some other factors involved there as well?
The biggest part of it will be the volume, with increase in copper tons. There's probably, in my view, two things. One is the additional copper tons obviously makes a huge difference, but also, open-cut mining tend to be cheaper than underground mining. The stockpile build-up results in a bit of those, the cost getting carried over. In my view, it would be 80% plus just because you mine more tons. That just shows you the flexibility, the high level of fixed costs, I guess, in these businesses. More tons just clearly go to the bottom line.
Excellent. Thank you. You just touched on there, building the stockpiles. Can you just run us through what strategies you guys are considering for stockpile processing? Is it just going to be about grade first, or will coverage come into it?
Yeah.
Are you-
Look-
At a certain level.
Currently it would be, obviously, underground ore goes first because that's your highest grade. Then the stockpiles are getting managed between high grade, medium grade, low grade, and mineralized waste. The highest grades goes in first as we put it back in. It's really driven by grade. The recoveries are, once we get through, there's an area now where we're getting slightly lower recoveries. As we get more deeper into the sulfides, we expect recoveries to recover. We don't use recovery really as the driver. It's about grade.
Going in first with the undergrounds, obviously the highest grade going up.
Okay. Thanks. Just quickly, one last one. You mentioned, if it all comes together for Golden Plateau at Cracow, you'd like to be sort of starting there in FY 2028. Is that a development start or a production start? I understand guidance is coming out-
Yeah.
shortly, what are you kind of aspiring to there?
We're aspiring, so it will take us, once we make the decision that the project makes sense, which should be in the next three to six months. Getting approval to start mining is about 12 months. Now, we already started that process just from approval, because it will be a major amendment, and major amendments in Queensland, it's about 12 months. The aim is to really start working there as a strip in early FY 2028.
Okay, cool. Excellent. Thanks for that clarification. Cheers. I'll pass it on. Thanks, André.
Thank you. Are there any other questions from anyone? I've got some which came through earlier, which I'll just touch on some of those questions. If you want to ask any questions, just put up your hand and I'll take those questions. Just to make sure I'm good. I had a few questions online as well about the feasibility study updated Stockman. As I said earlier, that will come out in this half. Once we get it out, we will decide which is the best way forward. Currently, my view is it looks very strong. Depending on where we get to, we will decide what's the best way forward from a finalizing the feasibility study, and we will communicate that to the market. We talked about some of the other questions already. We talked about the tons coming out of Murrawombie.
As I said, there'll be over 1 million tons by November. The key for us, Jag, I've got a question about Jag and what do we do with Jag. The key is we have got the care and maintenance cost down now to about AUD 2.5 million per annum. Clearly waiting for the base metal results and as we touch on, we are contemplating doing some gold exploration at Jag as well in FY 2027. Those are some of the questions I had. I had a question, can we speed up Constellation open pit and underground because there's cash available? We are going as fast as practical possible already. There's no real opportunity. We need to get to the first year of production out of the pit so we can start the decline.
As I said earlier, we start the pre-strip pretty much in the next few weeks, and then it's all about getting that in place. Speed up conversion of resource reserves drilling. Look, you can only fit so many drill rigs into these mines and without wasting money. The aim is to try to drill two or three years in results ahead of ourselves. That is the plan. We also will put about the same amount of exploration dollars, as I said earlier, around AUD 25 million to AUD 30 million of exploration back into the business again in FY 2027. There is significant money going in already. That's some of the questions we had online. I don't know if there's any other questions from anyone. I've got, let me just have a look. We got Richard.
Richard, I think you're open to talk.
Yeah. Can you hear me, André?
Yeah, I can. How you doing?
Yeah. I'm just interested with the Murrawombie Pit, what the GM metallurgy of that is like. Is there a transitional zone? How far through that are you?
We're basically through the transitional zone, Richard. We're now in oxide and sulfides. There's not much more to go. We're basically, for the next few months till November, it will all be sulfides.
Yep. Thanks.
All right. We got Alan. Alan, I think you need just unmute yourself. Alan, can you hear me?
Yes.
Yep. You got a question?
Yeah, André, this may be a bit early, but I was wondering if you had a broad estimate of the full year cost of depreciation and amortization and also full year finance costs.
Oh, that's a bit early. Look, a lot of that or some of that will come out next week. I can't give you the numbers off the cuff, and I think it also maybe till the guidance is out, we probably just need to get that out first, and then I'm happy for you to make contact and we can help you with some numbers.
Okay. I presume it's fair to say that the finance costs will materially reduce in the second half because of the-
Yeah.
repayment of the debt.
Yeah, the repayment of the debts there, the finance cost currently in the business is the finance cost for the environmental bonds. That will still be there till we refinance those, it will be less than what's in this year's, but it will still be there for FY 2027.
Sorry, André, could you repeat that? I think I missed that.
There is a facility, a guarantee facility in place, which we are still paying interest on. There will be some finance costs still remaining in FY 2027.
Right.
Which obviously less than FY 2028 because FY 2028 included AUD 40 million financing costs and interest for the original AUD 40 million facility.
Right. Okay. Thank you.
All right. We got Tim. Tim, you probably just need to unmute yourself.
Sorry. Yeah. Too many pop-ups.
Yeah.
There we go.
That's all right.
It's okay. Thank you, presser, and well done for the last couple of years on behalf of all of us.
Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it.
You've worked hard. You're over the first finish line, I think. I'll call it Anomaly K. That's how long I've been around. You've touched on it a couple of times. I think pre-stripping's gonna be done soon, and you're anticipating.
Yep.
The oxide, I think I heard the oxide is going to go straight to the mill rather than.
We will stockpile it first. We are doing some test work, the test work which we have done to put the oxide through the mill looks very promising. Although you get slightly lower recovery on your copper, you do get good gold recoveries and good silver recovery. It is better than putting it on the heap leach. The aim is to put the oxides through the mill, at some point in FY 2027.
Okay. That is very good to know. Well, again, you alluded to it as well because I have got to go back and look at the old results. From memory, the gold, when you got down 20, 30 meters or something, you were getting above a gram a ton or something.
Yeah. There is some really good gold grades in there.
When do you anticipate some of the sulfides and supergene sort of coming up the road?
I need to just make careful that I don't talk. I think it's within the first six months.
Okay. That's good. Okay. Yep. Yeah. Again, rough.
Yeah. No.
Rough.
I'll have to go back and make sure, but I know the sulfides or the transitional or the oxide ends with it stops within the first 30 meters of the pit.
Okay. Yeah. Timing in terms of how deep and how quick.
Yeah.
You think you're gonna go. even.
Okay.
if it was within the second half sort of thing, then it's still within.
We're trying to be in ore, which we'll be processing the mill in quarter three.
Fair enough. Okay. That answers totally the question. Thank you.
Yep. All right.
Much appreciate it.
Not a problem. Okay. I think that's everyone with questions. I'll give it a couple of more seconds, and then if there's no more questions. Thank you, everyone, and appreciate you joining the call for the Aeris results. Enjoy your day.