Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Peter Botten, and I'm Chairman of Aurelia Metals Limited. Welcome to Aurelia's 2022 Annual General Meeting. Before we commence proceedings, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today, the Jagera and Turrbal peoples. I'd also like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands upon which Aurelia operates and pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging. This is our first ever hybrid AGM. I wish to thank everyone for attending today, either in person or online. We're very pleased to be able to once again host a physical AGM, but also have the flexibility for those who prefer to participate virtually.
Whilst every effort has been made to ensure today's meeting runs smoothly for those attending online, if technology issues do arise, a short recess or an adjournment may be required depending on the number of shareholders affected. If this occurs, I shall advise you accordingly. Just some housekeeping for those here with us in person. Could I please ask you, check that your mobile phone is on silent, and if you hear the emergency alarm, please follow the directions from Alan's staff. All our board members are present today and are on my far left-hand side, is Paul Harris. Next door to Paul is Bob Vassie. Andrew Graham, our Interim CEO, is on my immediate left. On my right-hand side is Bruce Cox. To Bruce's right is Susie Corlett. Our CFO and Company Secretary is on Susie's right, Ian Poole.
Also, with us today is Helen Gillies, who is also joining us online from Perth. Good afternoon. Welcome, Helen. Thanks for joining us. Also with us, as I mentioned today, is the company's Interim Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Graham, our Chief Financial Officer and Company Secretary, Ian Poole, and our Chief Operating Officer, Peter Trout, who is in the body of the audience and who just put his hand up. Representing the company's auditors, Ernst & Young, is Ms. Kellie McKenzie, who's sitting at the front of the meeting. She'll be available to answer any questions in relation to the audit of the company. I'll now address the quorum. Under our constitution, a quorum for a shareholder meeting is three members. I do believe we have a quorum present. I now declare the meeting open.
If I move to the agenda, I propose that the notice of meeting dated 24th of October 2022, which was made available to shareholders, be taken as read. As announced to the market on the 18th of November, we have withdrawn Resolution 4 from the formal business of the meeting, and therefore this resolution will not be put to shareholders today. Moving to the agenda of today's meeting, I'll deliver a brief address. Our Interim CEO, Andrew Graham, will then deliver a presentation on the company and our operations. This will be followed by the formal business, which is to receive and consider Aurelia's full year 2022 financial statements and reports and to put three resolutions to shareholders.
The resolutions cover the adoption of the Aurelia's FY22 Remuneration Report, and the re-election of Paul Harris, and the election of Bruce Cox as directors in accordance with the company's constitution. As you will appreciate, participation in the business of the meeting and asking of any questions is confined to shareholders and those persons entitled to vote on behalf of shareholders. If you are attending in person and wish to ask a question, please stand and show your yellow or blue attendance card. State your name prior to asking your questions, please. If you're attending virtually, you'll be able to ask questions either verbally or in writing. Please submit your question via the Q&A function on your Zoom screen.
In order for the moderator to identify you as a shareholder online, we ask that firstly, shareholders type in their name and shareholding SRN or HIN at the start of their question, or company representatives, proxies, or those with powers of attorney identify the shareholder they are representing at the start of each question. If your question is about a specific resolution, please include the number of the resolution to help us address your question at the appropriate time. If your question is a general question about the company or its operations, please put general question. We will address any general questions after the Interim CEO's presentation. Written questions may be amalgamated when we answer them. If a shareholder attending online wishes to ask a question verbally, please also write, "I'd like to speak," in the Q&A function.
I'll then invite the shareholders to ask their question verbally at the appropriate time during the AGM. Please be aware that there may be a delay between your submission of question and our receiving the question. I therefore encourage you to enter your questions early. Before I turn to the formal business of the meeting, I'd like to make some opening remarks regarding the company's activities over the past year and outlook moving forward. After two years of virtual AGMs, it's a real pleasure to welcome you to our first hybrid AGM. I'd like to acknowledge our many shareholders online, as well as those who've made the effort to meet with us in person to discuss company performance and hear about our plans for Aurelia Metals.
I know ensuring strong future for our company is something on which we are all keenly focused, given our unacceptable performance in 2022. Today, I want to address some of the operational issues we've faced over the last year, as well as update you on the wide-ranging programs that we have put in place to improve performance and capital management. These programs are already delivering results and signal a sharp turnaround in our underlying performance. The ship is turning, maybe not fast enough for us all, but it is turning. I also want to convey the compelling opportunity offered by our Cobar development portfolio, and in particular, the outstanding Federation project, where our discussions on project funding are now well progressed. It is with determination we pursue three leading priorities as we close the chapter on FY 22.
1, we need to recover performance at the mines to ensure high margin, low cost production that delivers cash flows to fund future growth. We need to predictably deliver on budgets and guidance and rebuild the confidence of our shareholders and financiers in the ability of the company to deliver operational and financial objectives. 2, we need to ensure highly skilled, capable leaders are at the helm of the company to successfully achieve value-adding growth. 3, deliver a competitive funding solution to commence development of what is our highest in situ value asset in Federation. I hope today you'll leave confident your company is in good hands with a clear pathway to strong shareholder returns over the next 12-18 months. If I turn to FY 2022 performance. First, let's look back at on the year that was.
With the veil of COVID lifted, the company is pleased to emerge with an improved safety record with a lost time frequency rate of 8.75. The result represented a further year-on-year reduction. The result is not good enough. No one should come to work and be injured in any way whilst at the workplace. A safety journey, physical and mental, is a real focus for the whole organization, with our target of moving to class-leading performance as soon as we can. Our performance in safety was even more important this year, given external distractions of a rapidly escalating cost environment, supply chain challenges, and an extremely tight labor market with high turnover of staff and contractors. On their own, these factors provided a complex landscape for Aurelia's operations.
When combined with lower than expected metal production and disappointing gold grades at the Peak and Dargues Mine, the impact on cash flows was significant. In March, Aurelia declared a substantial impairment at Dargues in recognition of reduced forecast average gold grades and thus overall reduction in life of mine inventory. The board recognizes shareholders would have been bitterly disappointed with this result and acknowledges the work needed to ensure the right expertise and diligence is applied in future business development undertakings. At the end of the year, our cash position totaled AUD 76.7 million. Acknowledging the weak performance in the September quarter, efforts are being redoubled as part of our performance recovery to ensure improved cash generation and cost control across all of our assets. We remain extremely excited by the potential of the Federation and Great Cobar complex.
These developments will progressively move the company to a base metals focus over the next few years, growing Aurelia into one of the few diversified mid-cap base metal producers. At Federation, perhaps the highlight of the year was the substantial progress made towards development of this exceptional asset. At year-end, surface works were 90% complete with the box cut in place and the portal awaiting first blast for development of the exploration decline. Since then, even more work has been completed, and we are now 90 metres underground. During the year, a large body of work was undertaken to progress and finalize the Federation feasibility study, which was released on the 10th of October 2022. The study reveals the significant value opportunity that Federation represents to Aurelia shareholders.
At 16.7% zinc equivalent ore reserve grade and a net present value ranging from AUD 186 million to AUD 415 million, it's truly a fantastic asset. I can confirm while the project remains paused to ensure fit for purpose funding solutions, the whole team stands ready and waiting to remobilize and continue developing this world-class mine. Further optimization of the capital costs and mining plans continue. Following the targeted development of Federation, we plan to direct our growth efforts to the Great Cobar deposit, which is expected to underpin Peak's future as a material copper producer. In January, the company released a pre-feasibility study demonstrating a robust technical and economic case for a low-risk brownfield development of the copper-rich Great Cobar deposit.
Later in March, full development consent was received from the New South Wales government to develop Great Cobar, we're excited by the opportunity to bring one of Australia's highest-grade copper projects into production. A feasibility study will be prepared to ensure the project will be executed in a way that realizes the full value of this outstanding asset. Both Federation and Great Cobar will benefit strongly from our substantial and established mine and milling infrastructure, providing our shareholders with low cost, capital efficient growth. The discovery of Federation and Great Cobar are evidence Aurelia has one of the most successful exploration programs in the industry, combined with perhaps the most coveted ground position in the region. In FY 2022, the team continued to deliver with some of the best drill results delivered to date at Federation, Great Cobar and the Kairos deposit at Peak.
These results contributed to the 5% year-on-year growth in mineral resources to 29 million tonnes and a 45% increase in Great Cobar resource tonnage to 7.7 million tonnes. Our first major strategic priority for the organization is performance recovery. With our sights firmly focused on turning this organic growth into shareholder returns, it's imperative we recover our operating performance to increase cash flows as we go forward. This is, as I say, our first strategic priority. To do this, we have implemented a range of internal programs to improve operational performance, as well as an external review of cost efficiencies and management. Our objective is to deliver predictable, superior operating performance, which delivers on budget and guidance, product volumes and revenues.
This will drive increased value and improve our ability to fund growth, including the finance and completion of the development of Federation followed by Great Cobar. We must rebuild confidence with our shareholders and financiers by showing we can deliver what we say. With this in mind, we have brought in further expertise, including a team from KPMG to aid management in reviewing operating efficiencies, optimizing our mining and processing infrastructure, as well as then improving cash flow management, cost control and budgeting. We also continue to optimize the development plans for Federation. Today, approximately halfway through the second quarter of FY 2023, performance is on track with guidance. It is expected to continue to improve, particularly in relation to costs, as we start to see the benefit of our intervention programs at the sites. Today, Andrew will take us through these plans in more detail.
We look forward to reporting our December quarter physicals and cost outcomes in January progressively demonstrating the projected success of our performance improvement plans. Our second strategic priority is leadership renewal. Following the departure of Dan Clifford, a global executive search for a new CEO is underway as the company prepares to take the world-class Federation project from development into production. A key priority for the appointee will be to unlock further value at Federation via optimizing the mine design and development, as well as a broader review of the company's extensive assets and infrastructure in the Cobar Basin to deliver improved shareholders' return. Recruitment for a permanent CEO is underway, Andrew Graham, Aurelia's current General Manager of Growth, has stepped into the role as interim CEO.
Andrew is a highly regarded mining professional with a broad range of operating and development experience with companies including BHP, OZ Minerals, Zinifex and MMG. Andrew will be a strong pair of hands as we work through the transition to a new CEO. The recent appointment of Martin Cummings as Chief Financial Officer is also part of the board's plan to ensure we have the right skill sets at the helm of the company. Martin is well qualified to help manage our capital and future funding arrangements as part of our third strategic priority moving forward. That third priority is the delivery of appropriate cost-effective funding for Federation. Running in parallel with our performance recovery program is the work stream to arrange and deliver the best funding solution for what are the exceptional rates of return offered by developing Federation.
Discussions with multiple potential counterparties are taking place. We are well-placed in finalizing a funding structure we believe is balanced, efficient, and cost-effective. This structure also minimizes our exposure to the challenges of inflation and supply chain delivery while optimizing the value of our existing infrastructure in the Cobar area. We are targeting finalization of funding structure in the first quarter of CY 2023, and subsequently remobilizing to the Federation site as quickly as possible thereafter. With returns from our organic growth portfolio now in sight, the board has chosen not to pay a dividend this year and continue towards achieving first cash flows from Federation, followed by Great Cobar. In closing, I'd like to thank our local communities, our suppliers, and other stakeholders for their commitment and support.
Our relationships with all who have a vested interest in our business continues to flourish as we mature our sustainable foundation. While much was achieved this year in the space of diversity and inclusion, climate change, First Nations engagement, and consultation with community groups, I hope to see even greater advances as we move forward through FY 2023. My sincere appreciation is extended to the dedicated people of Aurelia Metals. You have consistently stepped up through the trying circumstances of the pandemic over the last two years, and you continue to support the company's operational delivery and growth ambitions. Thank you to my fellow directors, inclusive of Lawrie Conway, who recently departed Aurelia after five years of service and stewardship of the audit committee. Newly appointed non-executive director, Bruce Cox, has stepped into this role, and I also thank him for coming up to speed so quickly.
I'd like to thank Dan Clifford for his tireless dedication in leading Aurelia over the last three or so years. There are few CEOs I've met over the years who have worked harder than Dan in addressing the many challenges the company has faced over this time. He's a good human being, and I wish him well in the future. I'd also like to thank our soon-to-be retiring company secretary and chief financial officer, Ian Poole, for all his hard work in managing our accounts, financing arrangements, and company secretarial services over the last few years. Again, I wish him well in the future, and I'm sure his golf handicap will benefit from more time on the course. Finally, I'd like to leave you with the knowledge that every single member of the Aurelia team is intensely focused on three things.
The safety of our employees and contractors will always be our first priority. A return to operational excellence across our business, optimizing our value-creating Federation and Great Cobar developments with delivery of an appropriate, cost-effective supportive financing. We believe together, delivery of these outcomes will result in significant and appropriate recalibration in the market value of your business. We look forward to delivering strong results for you in 2023. With that in mind, I'll throw open to Andrew to walk us through a presentation on the business. Andrew, over to you.
Thanks, Peter. I'm certainly humbled to have the chance to serve the company in this capacity, at what is actually a really important time. Now, I'm conscious that quite a number of you won't know me, and I thought probably worth introducing myself. Some of you might have heard me talk to the ABC Radio about Federation and Great Cobar and the exciting things we were doing in the Cobar region. Some of you may have heard me on quarterly calls, through this year. I don't intend on going through my resume. If you wanna find out my background, you can Google me and see me on LinkedIn. What I do want to tell you is why I do what I do. You know, I'm passionate about mining. I've been in mining for more than 26 years.
I love the industry. I love what we do. I love the fact that we're primary producers, and we're producing the commodities that the world needs going forward. I'm also passionate about growth and development and corporate strategy. And my career, I started out as a mining engineer. I still am a mining engineer. It's evolved into that space around strategy and development, spent a lot of time in mergers and acquisitions, a lot of time in project development studies, capital project studies, including when I was at MMG, about seven years ago. Dugald River was at a similar place to Federation where work had started, work had stopped. At the time I was leading projects, and we took it back in a new configuration to get board approval.
Some of the work I've been doing in the last weeks and months on Federation reminds me a lot of that position, and I'm absolutely confident, therefore, that we can take that forward. I'm also passionate about making things better, and one of the roles I had in the past at BHP was heading business improvement for the aluminum division. It's part of something even outside of work that I just love. I love taking something and changing it and making it better. I'm looking for opportunity to make things better. We've certainly got that opportunity here today. I'm going to relish that. I joined earlier in the year, and I sometimes think about why I joined in a sort of a positive sense. What is it that attracted me?
I was attracted by the foundation of Federation, Great Cobar, of the underlying assets, of the good people I met along the way. None of that's changed. All of that is still with us today. If anything, it's probably better. You know, we've put out the Federation feasibility study. We're well advanced on Federation permitting. We've had drill success around Great Cobar, and we've materially extended that resource. I look at what attracted me. You know, it's there and it's better. Our job in the next little while will be to unlock that. Before I get into that, we'll flip to the year that was, and I'll make some comments, adding to Peter's comments already, just around how we're seeing the underlying business. I do want to spend a fair bit of time today talking about the way forward.
Firstly, the safety. The pleasing piece of this chart is that we've maintained the improvement. To Dan and Peter Trout's credit, through 2020 into 2021, there was a very material improvement in safety performance. We've maintained that, so we haven't gone backwards. Obviously, we've also plateaued. To Peter's comments earlier, you know, we won't rest until we are sure and confident that our people go home safely every day. There's still work to do, and we're certainly going to be focused on that. When I look at safety stats, we often see them on the first line of a presentation. We see a set of numbers. I see a set of people because every one of those numbers is someone wounded or injured while involved in our work.
We're, you know, we're very focused on improving that performance, not just maintaining the status quo. The other chart we're showing in here is our Environmental Incident Frequency Rate. It's not a chart that a lot of companies show. We're very proud of our environmental record and our performance, and we're very focused on making that better. Just to correlate, those numbers are very good. We don't have. We're very proud, as I say, of our performance. We don't have a lot of incidents. We have had a couple through this early part of the financial year. We know what they are. None of them resulted in any environmental harm. We've put in place steps to ensure that we don't have those issues again.
Free kicks if you want a better term. We are confident with continued performance we'll get back into our target. Our target is to be below three for this year. We're absolutely confident that we can achieve that. Operationally, I'm not going to dwell on this slide, and I'm not going to dwell on information you've seen before. You've seen the performance in full year result presentation. You've seen our guidance. You've seen our production. Despite the weak start to this year, the first quarter, we are maintaining guidance, and we do have confidence that we can actually achieve our guidance this year. Clearly though, as shown in that graph in the top left, you know, 2 quarters of performance in a row have not been good enough.
Our focus will be on what we can do to turn that around. Now, it's the focus of the entire business. It's certainly the focus for me going forward, and I will spend a lot of time on that today as we move forward. Just in full year results on face value, you know, it's not a bad set of results insofar as we generated good operating cash. We did reinvest effectively all of that cash into the business. As you can see from our cash balance staying rather static. It was a fairly hefty capital investment period. Clearly our role as a business and our goal as a business is to be generating free cash for our shareholders.
In some ways too, reasonable overall full year performances masks the issues that we saw in Q4. Those have continued into Q1. I'm gonna get straight into what we are actually going to do about that. Firstly, I just wanted everyone to be clear that although my role is an interim CEO role, I don't see it as a caretaker role. It can't be a caretaker role. We've got a lot of work to do, you know, within this next six-month period. That work is actually critical to the future of the business. My sleeves are rolled up as of Friday. They have been all the way through anyway. We're moving forward. For me, there's three key priorities in this period. The first one's safety. I've touched on our safety performance.
One thing, and I have driven this home with our operations teams, and I will do once I get down to site in this new capacity. In times of uncertainty and times of change, history, people say you also see an increased level of incidents, and we can't afford that. It's a message that we've driven, I've driven from day one, and I'll continue to drive as I get out to the sites, and we're pushing that down through our line. Clearly, you know, we can't afford hiccups along the way and a safety or environmental hiccup, is certainly something that can bring us unstuck very quickly. Operationally, as I mentioned, I'll cover this in quite a bit of detail, but we cannot and we will not continue, the way we have for the last two quarters.
It's just not good enough. We do have a plan to make that change, and a lot of that work is already in place and starting. As Peter mentioned, Federation funding is my third priority and not in order, but of three, you know, equally important priorities. It is the key catalyst for the shares going forward. We need to find a way forward that is in the interest of shareholders. We've got a range of options that we're considering and working through at the moment and our intent, as Peter mentioned, is to have a solution in place in quarter one of next calendar year. Moving on to performance improvement and what we're doing. I'll step through each of the assets. I'm not gonna dwell on the things that are on the left-hand side of your screen.
You've seen a lot of this stuff before. You've heard a lot of this stuff through the quarterly calls. We're certainly pleased to see an improved mining performance out of Peak, and greater production. Without that, you know, we're certainly in trouble. We're pleased to see that turnaround and that improved performance. Just to let you know what we're doing differently. First of all, across the entire business, we are in the midst of a very active margin enhancement project. We've called it Working Smarter. It's across each of the sites. It's at corporate. It's not just a cost out program and a cost reduction program. Very clear that it's a margin enhancement program. Certainly cost will make a piece of that.
Definitely you can improve margin by pulling out cost, but often you get greater leverage by working on the revenue side of your business as well. A key enabler for Peak going forward, and I'll get into what we're thinking about there, will be that margin enhancement project. You know, I talked about coming into this business and the things that interested me. One of the things that really interested me was the scale and the quality of the resource base at Peak. Peak's quite a complicated asset, but it has, you know, a very substantial and good grade copper inventory. It has exceptionally good grade gold and zinc ores. You know, part of the margin enhancement project, the cost improvement project, will be to get more of that material into a mine plan.
We are embarking on a program at Peak, reviewing our mine plan, thinking about what life of mine should look like. Ideally bringing a fair chunk of that inventory into our production inventory. The other thing, I'll get to it in a little bit more detail, as we outlined in the Federation Feasibility study, we are intending on taking Federation ore to Peak. There is some work that we can do, thinking about the optimization of that, timing, sequencing, equipment, flow sheet. All of that is active at the moment. I'm thinking about how we improve both Federation but also synergies to put at Peak. Moving to Hera. One comment I want to make straight up on Hera is it's not just a tonnes game. Hera is off grid.
The nature of, as a camp, it's an isolated site. It does have a reasonably high cost base, but it's not just about tons to dilute costs. My mantra is the right tons delivered effectively. There's a whole piece of work going on in respect to the Hera life of mine plan right now. It's been going on for quite a while. Thinking about there's a finite inventory left at Hera. How do we best exploit that sequence and grade and cut-offs, to maximize cash for the business in the remaining life of Hera?
There's a very active piece of work going on in that space currently, supported by some of the improvements you've seen in production, out of Hera's belt and rates out of Hera, which are critical to unlocking that future for the business. The other piece of work we're doing, with the shift of ore from Federation in the early days heading probably to Peak, and I'll talk about that in a moment. We're also doing some work around cost-effective preservation plans to the Hera plant, so that we can bring it back on to treat future ores. In respect to Dargues, I think it's important people separate the acquisitions from the underlying asset. We can't go backwards, we can't change the acquisition. We all agree Richell was a deal that probably should never have happened.
If we had our time again, we wouldn't do it, but we can't change that. The beauty of Dargues for us, though, is it's a reliable performer. We benchmarked all of our businesses. Dargues sits closest to a benchmark of any of our assets. It's day in, day out delivers what they say they're going to do. It has been making us cash along the way, which is certainly very good when we're looking at how we fund our growth projects. Dargues has an important piece for us in the business around that current point. Currently, we have two underground drill rigs working at Dargues. We're looking around extensional drilling as well as infill drilling, better understand what we have at depth.
We'll continue to do work, you know, into next year to think about whether we can bring some of those lower levels and lower inventory deeper in the mine into the mine plan. We'll turn now to Federation. Many of you who followed the journey with Aurelia will have followed this plenty of times and seen the announcements and sort of came along with it. Discovered in April 2019, you know, we've come a long way in what is actually a very short period of time. Declared first resource June 2020. We materially improved that, almost doubled that in June 2021. Through 2022, got a massive infill program and the shot there, it's hard to make out, but there's actually five drill rigs working in that shot.
Part of that was proving up that inventory that we drilled out to a state that would support the feasibility study. That in itself was very successful. I think we went from 29% of our resource sitting in the indicated category. I can't even read my numbers. Up to 62%. That was a material increase and is exactly what we were trying to achieve to underlie and support the feasibility study that's happened. First blast went off, we started the box cut, we did all the surface works. These shots here, as mentioned in the caption, September, things have moved on since then. The site's certainly looking like a mine site. The box cut became a decline, and 90 metres underground when things got pulled up.
There's been some additional drilling beyond the resource, which isn't yet in a declared resource. We did put out what is a very compelling feasibility study. It doesn't mean there's no work. While the decline's not going forward currently, you know, we're still very, very active. I'll talk in some detail on what we're doing around optimization of the project. We've obviously mentioned funding. The other piece, which is very active at the moment, is development consent, which is going extremely well, and we're continuing to progress that with pace. In Federation... The reality is, and in some ways when we announced the feasibility study, it all got caught up with funding and the market reaction and everything else that was going on, the results, the quarterly cash balance.
I think it may have got a little bit lost. The Federation itself is a very compelling polymetallic mine investment. you know, the feasibility study was mentioned earlier. you know, NPVs in the order of AUD 400 million, 71% IRR. The running spot at that time, still 37% IRR. These are compelling investment metrics. and it's borne out because of the quality of the resource, which Pete mentioned earlier, 16.7% zinc equivalent. There's very few else in the country with development projects that look like that. One of the things that I look after is exploration. We're certainly as a team, very excited about the potential around Federation.
We've curtailed some of the work we had planned for this year to preserve cash, but it doesn't take away the potential of Federation. At depth, along strike, in the hanging wall and the footwall, there's still plenty of potential to be had once we get back onto extensional and step out drilling as opposed to the infill drilling we've been doing through 2022. Importantly, the feasibility study presented a plan that leveraged the plants that we already have within the business. In a world at the moment where we're seeing capital inflation running rampant on a lot of projects, to not have to build a processing plant, to have a camp already in place at Hera, to have had most of our surface works done, the box cut done, the start of the decline in place.
We're in a very, very strong position to be insulated somewhat from the inflation of the environment. The other thing it does for us, by using the existing plants, it shortens the lead time to revenue. From restarting the decline, we'll see first ore within 12 months. That first ore can go straight to a plant and get turned into cash. There's, again, very few projects out there in Australia that you'll know can say that. I mentioned permitting, I mentioned that we're well progressed on that. It's certainly gone very well, it's a credit to the team internally who've been working on that. We're certainly thankful of the support we've had from both communities, our neighbors, the government regulators and other people.
We're on target to achieve probably full permitting by the middle of next year. At this stage we see nothing that may get in the way of that. You know, still plenty of work to be done in that. Of this slide, probably the bit that's most, in my mind, interesting and new and different, and something we really want to talk to you about today, because you've seen the other things before, you've seen the other story before, is the work we're doing to further optimize the project. When we did the feasibility study, and when you do feasibility studies, you don't just stop and put it on the shelf, and that's the project you deal with forever. The intent was to put out a feasibility study, and we're very fortunate to have very compelling sets of metrics.
The intent was to go and improve that further. There's some very active streams on at the moment. You know, the first one we're looking at is around capital optimization. Still there's plenty of potential we're seeing to bring capital out of that estimate. As I say, we're very actively looking at that. Whether it's reducing capital items, whether it's removing capital altogether, or whether it's simply deferring the spend so that it occurs later when we've actually got cash generation from the business. We're certainly using that as a lever to help reduce the amount we're seeking to fund. The mine plan always able to be further optimized and the team's back looking at that.
One of the things we're looking to try and do is bring forward ore, bring forward cash flow, bring forward revenue, and help therefore to fund the project, effectively self-funding the project. There's also some further optimization we can do on panel spacings and those sorts of things that we're looking at. Finally, I touched on it a little bit around ore flow optimization, and you will recall in the feasibility study, the plan is to split some of the super high-grade material up towards Peak, with the remainder staying at Hera. That's still the plan at this stage. One thing that we are looking to change is taking early ore from Federation up to Peak. The Peak plant is able to produce two separate products, the zinc concentrate and the lead concentrate.
We get much, much better payability for that. There's some very active work going on. As I say, we've put out a feasibility study that's absolutely compelling, but we believe we can actually make it better. Before I sum up, my last slide is on Cobar, Great Cobar. Unfortunately, Great Cobar often is the sort of last slide, the afterthought. My sense in talking to people is sometimes they forget we even have it. When you look at Great Cobar, it's one of the highest grade undeveloped copper resources in Australia. And we've borrowed a chart from another business who chose to put something like this out the other day without Great Cobar on it, so we've added Great Cobar. You can see it's sitting right up the top there on grade.
I've also just shown the bigger blue dot to the right of that, Peak copper. That's the stuff that's includes Great Cobar, but Peak also has its own copper resources already. You can see there's a very, very meaningful copper inventory there, within the Peak complex. Again, greenfield development, use of existing plant, fully permitted. Now, that work's been done. Our intent is to, as Peter mentioned, develop Federation. It's our highest value ore. It makes sense to take that first, but then move as the business moves forward and as plant capacity is available to bring on Great Cobar as a broader Peak copper business. I'll sum up. Four key points really for me to leave with you. Firstly, operational delivery. Significant and fundamental improvement is ongoing and is absolutely needed.
On the Federation project, you know, I leave it with you that this is an absolutely compelling shovel-ready project and that further optimization is happening. With respect to Federation funding, be assured it's a very active work stream. We are targeting first quarter of calendar year 2023. Don't forget Great Cobar. It is one of the highest grade undeveloped copper resources in Australia, and we have it sitting there at a brownfield setting. As I mentioned, certainly excited about taking on this challenge. I certainly thank the board for their confidence in me, and I look to keep all of you informed as we move forward with those things I've outlined. Back to you, Peter.
Thanks very much, Andrew. Thanks for that presentation. I'll now open the floor to general questions. There will be an opportunity later on in the meeting to ask questions against specific resolutions being put to the meeting. This is a time where you can ask some general questions about the business of the company and any questions that come from my, either my presentation or Andrew's. If you would like to stand up and ask a question from the floor in this room, please stand up and show a yellow or blue attendance card, state your name or, if appropriate, the shareholder you represent. When we've covered the questions from the room, we'll then cover questions from the online participants. Are there any questions on the general business of the company?
Thank you. My name is Glen Rushton , shareholder for some years, and an active participant in the quarterly conferences and so forth. I'm quite well aware of stuff going on. I refer to the announcement from Friday, the leadership changes and in particular the renewal plan. The board has appointed KPMG to perform a comprehensive review of operations to improve operational performance as well as enhance plant efficiency, operating costs and capital management. My observation and part of the discussion, it seems to me that it has been the ore grades that we've been particularly having issues with and some mining issues, so some which are much more to do with mine engineering than counting the AUD.
We've also in this year, taken steps to shift from a contractor basis to an operator basis. It seemed a little strange to me that we would choose KPMG, which is probably more noted for financial matters rather than what seems to be mine and geology matters to do this review. So I'm really like some, a bit more feedback on that. The other thing is, part B to that question, there's no timeline mentioned in any of the announcements about the review and report and so forth. If we could have some information on that. Thank you.
Thanks very much for your question. I'll have a shot at answering that. I suppose firstly, KPMG's got a number of dimensions and they certainly by reputation have an excellent skill set in allowing us to understand the numbers. Allowing us to better understand and better predict the cash flows and the associated accounting elements. They also have a significant mine which has been used in other companies as well, including sort of Round Oak and others. Of having really highly experienced and skilled mining engineers who right now are actually visiting the field this week to provide us with new ideas, new eyes, set of eyes about how we can optimize our mine plan. It's not one dimension around I originally thought KPMG was very much focused on the numbers. They are.
Okay.
We do need as a board to fully understand and predict where the cash flows are going, what our cost controls are and an optimization of our capital management across the business. They also have a dimension with these their consultants to really understand the mining operations and provide through these very experienced consultants through KPMG a different set of eyes about where the business can go, where the mine plans may have some ships, some optimization. They're out in the field right now actually providing us with that advice. They have been really instrumental already in providing advice to Andrew and the team, and Andrew can speak to that in a moment, if he wishes.
It is, we believe as a board, really necessary to get some other eyes into our business, both on the finance accounting, bean counting, cash flow management side, as well as getting different views around how our mines are traveling. They've provided that expertise over the last month or so and has already added some value. Andrew, I don't know whether you want to add anything to that from an operational side?
Yeah. Really briefly, I think I push and challenge and the KPMG technical people are pushing and challenging me, which is fantastic. That's what they're there for. If we think we've gone far enough to have another question, a different angle, you know, sometimes we can assure them, "Yes, we've thought about that and this is the reason this works or otherwise." It's just great having that challenge alongside us.
A timeline?
I just was gonna come to that. From a time perspective, we're actually really close as a board to be able to review a revised set of business plans and mine plans, which hopefully will both come to us next week. They'll be the basis for further engagement with our financiers and our various stakeholders that will, we believe, can underpin an appropriate financing for Federation. I would expect to be able to provide shareholders with an update, hopefully before Christmas, around the direction of that mine plan. Clearly we'll have further reporting at the end of the quarter around our results, our cost base and production into January next year. I would anticipate that we can provide further updates on that plan, to our staff and to our shareholders prior to Christmas. Are there any more questions on the floor?
Yes, Mr. Chairman. My name's Mike Menzies. I'm a shareholder. As some of you will know, I've had a reasonably long association with the company. While the report's here to run this meeting, I, in my view, the issues the company's faced in a period of record commodity prices have essentially been operational. I've got a range of questions I'd like to put to your chief operating officer concerning the operations. If this is the appropriate forum to do that, if he's available to come up and answer those questions, I'd be grateful for that opportunity.
Well, no, thanks. thanks very much for your interest. I know you've had a long history with the company, and, therefore have a very strong knowledge base around that. You're absolutely right that many of the challenges we have as an organization are around operations. I have no problems at all you asking a couple of questions of Peter. I'm sure Peter's available to come up and give you that. I would stress, though, that in the interest of time, and there's a lot of other potential questions and business to deal with, that maybe we could limit the number of questions to a couple of the key ones that I'm sure Peter can talk to you outside this meeting.
Certainly, I'm sure you've got a couple that you'd like to air in front of shareholders. I have no problems with that. I think, if we could limit the number of questions and time, that would be appropriate.
That might be a bit difficult, but anyway, I'll attempt to do.
I'll attempt to, dare I say it, to control the dialogue a little bit.
I don't think these are questions I want to avoid.
I'm sure they're not. Again, I think in the interest of time and for all shareholders, there's a good opportunity for you to ask a couple. I again think, bearing in mind, Peter's available and can speak to you outside of this meeting as well. Certainly, please, this is a platform to ask a few questions, so please go ahead and do it.
Okay. Peter, the first question I've got is that if you have a look, taking into account your views of the relationship between grades and recovery of gold at Hera, I noticed in the last quarter you had a head grade of 1.12 grams per tonne, and you got a recovery of 85%. In the previous quarter of 1.56 grams per tonne head grade, you only managed 81.4%. What's the explanation for that?
I think, as you know, there's a relationship generally between head grade and recovery, but there's also factors around mineralogy and operating performance. Part of the feed into the plant comes from different parts of the ore body and it responds differently through the plant in terms of recovery. Also in there is some adjustments based on assay returns from the refinery.
That's not necessarily the period recoveries. That's an accounting issue, we say.
No, no. That's a minor issue. We do take in adjustments, both positive and negative. In general response to your point is, over the course of the last two quarters, we have been mining from different parts of the ore body. Yeah.
Second question is in relation to the cash generation from Peak, which has been acknowledged as one of the major issues the company's got. From memory, the Kairos ore body was discovered in 2019. We started development also in 2019. You started initial slope, sloping in January of last year, or in the March quarter of last year. Why is it this far down the track that the Peak decline hasn't been pushed through to marry up with the development from Perseverance?
The answer to that is we haven't needed to push it through. We've had a second means of egress through Alliance internally and put the money, put the additional development in costs more money, and we've chosen not to spend that money at this point in time.
In terms of where we're going in terms of maximizing grades and values out of the project, the highest value ore in the project is at Kairos. You are limited by only one means of access with your trucking. You've got to get all your trucking out, all your waste back in a mine that's already congested. If you're going to get real value and volumes out of Kairos, you've got to join those two pieces of development. I just thought it was pretty self-evident.
If trucking was a constraint, that'd be the case, but it's not trucking that's a constraint. You'll see from the diagrams, the long sections we put out, the decline is extended up and downwards at Kairos. It has two mining fronts at Kairos. It's the ability to turn those slopes over that is the constraint on production there, not the trucking.
Okay. The next thing I'd like to ask you is in relation to this recovery plan. I've seen what's been printed, and I listened to the last conference call. Am I correct in saying that you're looking now at targeting between 550 and 600,000 tonnes of ore out of the Peak as part of your recovery plan and resizing?
That was made before. That decision was made as part of life mine planning and budgeting process, implemented in the first quarter of this year. That was operating independently of the improvement plans.
Okay. The resizing from 550 to 600,000 tonnes, when you actually have a look at what you've actually achieved in the whole of that time since the mill's been upgraded, the mill has capacity of 800,000 tonnes a year. Apart from 1 month, which was August 2020. You've never operated at any other than fact. I've had a look at your mining rates, for the last 2 years, they've been 607,000 tonnes and 597,000 tonnes. It doesn't seem to me as though there's a lot of resizing involved in that. When you're talking about resizing to 500 to 600, that's all you've been doing. The only improvement I can see is by going from a 7-day to a 5-day roster.
Which to me seems as though a simple management issue that should have been addressed earlier.
That's certainly one of the changes that's happened. There's no point resourcing for 800,000 tonnes per annum if you can't deliver that from mine. The second part, though, is when we look through the life of mine plans. To get more ore out of the mine, we'd be chasing material at lower margins. We spend a fair chunk of cash at the moment for development in to bring that ore in production in the future.
Hold on. You are talking about, a resizing the operation. Well, what's the difference in size are you're talking about if you're gonna continue doing what you've already been doing?
No. We brought back the mining crews underground from about 170 people down to a little over 100 people to sustain that production rate going forward.
Well, I really can't understand that. You've been having troubles with your production because of COVID and the absence of people. Now you're reducing your workforce, and you're gonna produce the same amount. Like, it seems to me as though you're just going in circles.
Well, the other part of that, Mike, is we've also put in some new equipment which is much more productive than the existing or previous equipment in place.
Final question. It relates to the options that were looked at in relation to the feasibility study. Can you tell me when you applied for the trucking permit I assume it's just from Federation, but the trucking permit to take ore from Federation to Peak. When was that applied for?
We have an existing approval for Hera to take 100,000 tonnes per annum from Hera up to Peak. For the EIS application made in February this year, we applied for the additional tonnage to come from Federation up to Peak.
Which is the additional tonnage? Another 100.
Taken up to 200,000 tonnes per annum.
Yeah. Was it suggested or were you advised in the past by the board or internally by management to obtain a haul truck from Federation, a part of the Federation output and part of the ore from Hera's output to Peak for processing?
That was discussed, but it wasn't the go-forward option that came out of the scoping study and taken into the feasibility study.
As part of that, I've heard the previous managing director talk about the comfort he got from the optionality of having a number of available plants and processing options. What value are those options to you if you don't have permitting in place to use them?
First thing to do is get the permitting, and then there's a well-proven process to modify the permits based on the studies and the plans going forward.
Would you agree that had you applied when it was suggested to you some years ago to obtain those permits for trucking, that the company would be far better off in terms of its current options?
In the benefit of hindsight, Mike, it would have benefited to apply for permitting for everything, every possible combination out of that site. That's not how the system works.
Well, it was saying it should have been. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mike. Obviously, if you have further questions or queries of Pete or Andrew, I'm sure you're forthright enough to come forward and discuss that with him. Thank you for your contribution. Are there any more questions from the floor? No other questions of general nature from the online participants?
There are three questions, Chair. Mr. Ben Hunt, from Portenders would like to ask a question. He's online, but I'd like to verbally ask the question.
Can you hear me?
Yes, we can. Thanks, Mr. Hunt.
Can you hear me?
Hi, Mr. Hunt. Can you unmute yourself, please?
Am I unmuted now, am I?
There you go. Yep. You are, yeah. We can hear you. Thanks, Mr. Hunt.
I'm pleased to see that the net present value of AUD 450 million is there. If you take the number of shareholders now, that's worth approximately AUD 0.35 per share. You're probably aware that the shares are trading at about AUD 0.10 a share. I wonder if the board could give me any explanation of the difference between those two numbers.
Yeah, I have to provide a clarity. I mean, obviously the market is the market and shares trade where the market believes they should trade. I think it's fair to say that the confidence of our shareholders and financiers, et cetera, has been dented by the reality that we've been unable to deliver predictable outcomes on our mining and our financial results over the last 12 months. That confidence needs to be rebuilt by us actually delivering on what we're guiding, delivering on our budgets.
Clearly that will help us move forward with an appropriate financing for Federation and shareholders who I believe will see our plans, but more importantly, us delivering on our plans will see a much better correlation between the core value of our business, which is far higher than our present share price. Be able to make an appropriate market assessment to move that share price up towards our NPV. It does require rebuilding of confidence. It requires comprehensive, believable, and deliverable planning to move that share price and get confidence in, as I say, both our shareholder and financing groups and stakeholders to actually move that value towards the NPV of what we believe to be our core business.
That is the absolute focus of the board to ensure that management and board are able to do that. It goes beyond me saying that. It actually needs actual delivery. You know, I always say talk's cheap, but actually what does speak is actually delivery of results. I believe we can improve that confidence and have share price better reflect the core value of our business.
Yes, the market is generally not wrong. You're saying that the net present value of current management and board is roughly AUD 800 million or something, negative?
Don't quite understand where you got the 800 from. Look, the market is never wrong. Of course, it's never right either. We trade at whatever our shareholders buy and sell at. There is a real, I think, challenge to us as an organization is confidence in what we're doing and where we're going. Certainly my discussions with shareholders has indicated they're keen to understand how we can turn this business into a much better place. I'm sure when the confidence returns and we can deliver a smart, sensible, cost-effective financing plan for Federation, I'm sure that value will be very different in terms of share trading.
Thank you for that.
You know, there's been more of a statement with some questions from Sir Harry. He says, "I'm curious to know of the plan, as we have the three mines set to back to positive. The Hera mine should be as early as six months' time. You could have been specific longer, no doubt, all the work stopped at Federation now and are linked to the life of Hera. Your cash flows from Hera will end before the start of production at Federation. Will the returns from the cobalt deposits and the direct producer not to push forward with Federation? Without a mining lease approval at Federation, I could assume getting outside funding from, for Federation will be difficult. I believe the operating hours of the mill at Peak been reduced. It tells me some uncertainty on the future.
I'm aware of the huge potential of Federation, but a full bore approach, most definitely outside other issues, will make life difficult in the industry having come off for a company. What are other options on the table to try and lift the company from going backwards?
Well, thank you. Those are all series of questions in that space, and I don't know, I'll attempt to answer some or all of them. Look, firstly, I suppose the focus for the organization is absolutely delivering a financing solution for Federation. There are a whole range of equity and debt options that the company might have at both the company and asset level. We're very much focused on delivering that in the relatively short term. That is all based on a recap of our mining planning, and Andrew spoke to that, and we'll be reviewing that as a board over the coming few weeks.
Certainly I would anticipate that we'll be communicating some of the outworkings of that to the market, shareholders and financiers. It is based on having a credible plan, which allows us some great level of certainty around delivery. Without that certainty and constantly going back to our financiers to adjust delivery with production cost base is obviously been detrimental to our business. On that basis, we're very close to finalizing a revised plan, which we will be discussing with our financiers and to our shareholders. We believe that we have a number of opportunities in financing that are credible and cost effective.
I should say that we're also seeing that our main development license is likely to be granted sometime in the first half of next year. That will open up a series of other financing options for Federation at that time. Certainly as a priority, we are working very closely with the New South Wales government and other stakeholders to facilitate the grant of that license as soon as we can reasonably do so. As I say, that does change the financing op-tech pretty heavily. We certainly see that as possibly delivered to us sometime in the first half of next year. I, Andrew, do you wanna add any comments about production at Hera and where that goes?
No. Look, I need to flag that it is a work in progress, as I mentioned. Once we do have a definitive position, we'll come back to the market on that, and let you all know. We also would need to come back to our own people around giving them some certainty of the way forward for the business as well. So very much an active process.
Okay. Thank you.
There's no other questions, but as part of the things. Yeah.
Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you for that. We'll now move on to the formal business of the meeting and we'll now move to the consideration of the four items of business for today. The notice of the meeting sets out the resolutions proposed for the meeting. No notice of other business has been received in accordance with the Corporations Act. Only the items of business to come before the meeting today will be those specified in the notice of the meeting, other than resolution four, which has been withdrawn. Firstly, I'd like to explain today's voting procedures. As stated in the notice of meeting, all resolutions will be put to a poll.
I appoint Adrian Atkinson of Automic Group, who are the company share registry, who have examined and prepared summaries of the proxy forms received to act as returning officer and to conduct the poll. If you are attending in person, please fill out your voting card and our Automic representative will collect your completed voting card at the appropriate time. If you're voting online, you'll see instructions on the Automic website once you have logged in on how to register and vote online. Please be aware that you should not click next until you have selected your vote for all resolutions. Resolution 1 relating to the remuneration report is advisory only. Resolutions 2 and 3 are ordinary resolutions, meaning that to be carried, they require a 50% of the votes cast by members who are entitled to vote on the resolution.
Resolution 1 is subject to voting exclusions and further details are set out in the notice of meeting. Each resolution is discussed. It, we will be showing the wording of each resolution and the proxies received prior to the meeting for each resolution. The proxies received prior to the meeting represents, 491,410,067 shares, or 40% of the issued capital of the company. To the extent permitted by the Corporations Act and ASX Listing Rules, and subject to the voting exclusions detailed in the notice of meeting, all valid undirected proxies or open votes that have nominated the Chairman of the Meeting as their proxy will be cast in favor of each resolution in the notice of meeting.
Directors and executives identified as key management personnel will not be voting undirected proxy votes given to them for resolution one. The poll, and therefore the online voting portal, is now open and will remain open until I declare the poll closed. Your votes must be submitted prior to the poll being closed for them to count. I will now move to the first item of business, which is financial statements and reports. The first item is to receive and consider Aurelia's FY22 financial statements, the director's report, and the independent auditor's report. As no resolution is required, there will be no voting on this item of business. Kellie McKenzie from Ernst & Young is available to answer any questions you may have in regards to the audit.
Are there any questions from shareholders in the room regarding the financial statements or the audit or any other questions related to this piece of business? There are no questions in the room. Ian, are there any questions online?
No.
There are no questions online. There being no further questions or no questions, we'll move to Resolution 1. Resolution 1 relates to a non-binding resolution required by the Corporations Act in relation to the FY 22 Remuneration Report. The wording of the proposed resolution is shown on screen. The presentation of the Remuneration Report is a requirement for all listed companies. The company's Remuneration Report is included in the company's 2022 annual report. The Remuneration Report sets out remuneration of Aurelia's directors and key management personnel and Aurelia's remuneration policies in respect of the key management personnel.
In accordance with the Corporations Act, this vote is advisory only and does not bind the directors or the company. The proxies received in relation to this resolution are now shown on the screen. I now ask, are there any questions or comments from shareholders in the room on the remuneration report? Yes, thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. George Palmer, director of Canaccord Genuity . I noticed that during the meeting you kept preserving capital, preserving capital, preserving capital. That seems to be the main issue. You say in the annual report there's no dividend, we're preserving capital. I did notice that all the directors got an increase in directors' fees this year, so that's not preserving capital. Can we presume from this preserving capital that next year that the directors will not get an increase in directors' fees? We're preserving capital. You keep telling us we need to preserve capital, preserve capital, the directors got an increase in directors' fees this year. Can't afford to pay the shareholders AUD 0.001 dividend. We're preserving capital, but the directors. They're not on the borderline.
They're not getting AUD 50,000, AUD 60,000 a year that need just to lay, have a pay increase. They're getting well paid. They could well do without a pay increase for a year or 2 to have this money going back into the company for the development and the research and the money you need to spend. Thank you.
Thank you, sir, for your comments and questions. I can absolutely assure you that the directors will not be receiving any increase in their directors' fees this year. Let me pass over to Paul Harris, who's chair of the Remuneration Committee of our board, who clearly wants to say something.
Thanks, Peter. Sorry. Thanks, Peter. Absolutely valid question 100%. I mean, we all agree with you. Just to note, though, that those increases were from the prior year, not from the year of reporting.
Thank you. Are there any more questions on the remuneration report from the floor? If not, we could then move to online then, Ian.
No questions online.
No questions online. Okay. Well, I put to the meeting Resolution 1. Please record your votes in relation to Resolution 1 by choosing for, against, or abstain on your screen or voting card. Shareholders voting online are reminded not to click next until you've selected your vote for all resolutions. Are you a little while to vote accordingly? Okay. We will now move to Resolution 2, which is the re-election of Paul Harris. The next item is, as I say, Resolution 2, which is the re-election of Paul Harris as a non-executive director. The wording of the proposed resolution is shown on the screen, and Paul's credentials are outlined in the notices of meeting. Paul is the chair of the board's Remuneration and Nomination Committee and a member of the Audit Committee. I now ask Paul to address shareholders regarding his re-election.
Thanks, Peter. First, I'd like to say, it's an honor to be standing for re-election of this company. For those that don't know me, my name is Paul Harris. My early career was in markets and banking, and I spent a lot of time in the metals and mining M&A and capital markets at Merrill Lynch and Citibank. The latter half, in the last 10 years, I've spent on the other side advising boards on strategy, M&A, ECM, in particular capital markets, in a range of commodities in copper and cobalt and gold and also in potash. As Peter outlined, I am chair of Rem and Nom. It's a busy committee. It's one that moving and certainly been busy this year. I also sit on the audit committee under Bruce.
I have full faith in our new chairman, who has hit the ground running and has been working incredibly hard to turn this around because it's been a very difficult year. I'd just like to finish also by paying respect to the late Bob Johnson, who passed away a couple of weeks ago, who was our previous chair prior to Peter, with Susie as interim, who was the chair when I first joined the board back at the end of 2018. Thanks for that, Peter. I do have a question in relation to resolution 4, which has been pulled. I can ask that now or at the end of the meeting. It's up to you.
I think we'll do resolution four question on, Q&A later.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you, Paul. Paul's re-election is unanimously supported by the rest of the board. The proxies received in relation to this resolution are shown on the screen. Are there any questions or from shareholders in the room regarding resolution two, the re-election of Paul Harris? Please.
Glen Rushton again. Sorry to put you on the spot, Paul, but you're up for re-election, so I get to ask my question.
Absolutely. Why not?
Funding. Funding for our projects, funding for our future is a really big deal, and you seem to be the main director on the spot for doing that. My question relates to, are you playing an active role in working through the funding of propositions and seeking and sourcing funding for our future projects?
Yeah, good question. Absolutely. I think all the board members have leaned in over this period. We all have a different skill set. In particular, Susie's got a wonderful background, in particular on the debt side. Mine's probably more on the equity side and strategy around M&A. The answer unequivocally yes, and will continue to. The amount of time this year that I've spent on this board in relation to these matters outweighs any of the other roles I have at the moment. I have to say, I enjoy it. They're a great board to work with, but we've all got different skill sets, and they're all utilized at the appropriate time. Yes.
I'll just add something to that too. The board is leaning in right across the board. as Paul has highlighted, there are a number of skill sets that we each bring to this. We recognize and own the issues that the company has, and we absolutely are applying our skill sets across the board to address those challenges. I think we are or I know we are making progress. This is not, it's not a straightforward piece of business at the moment. But this board, I believe, is working very cohesively to address the challenges we have, and we need to.
It's our reputations, it's our belief in the company as well. No one wants to be associated with a company that is not performing well. None of us believe that's appropriate. We are leaning in big time. Are there any other questions from the floor? Are there any questions online, Ian?
There are two questions online. Paul has one question already. Another one question.
In relation to resolution 4? Well, we're coming back to resolution four.
Coming back to resolution four. Also, Mr. Ben Hunt from Protango would also like to ask a general question. Oh, sorry. Would like to ask a question on resolution two.
Mr. Hunt, please go ahead. Mr. Hunt, don't forget to unmute yourself, please.
Can you hear me now?
Yes, we can, Mr. Hunt.
Yeah. Thank you, Chair. I want to speak against the motion, the reelection of Paul Harris. Not because I wish Paul any ill, but it's in relation to the Dargues purchase, which Andrew, I thought perhaps rather indiscreetly said, we wish we'd never done it. He did do it. It was, Dan has paid the price that has arisen out of that. It's not just Dan who makes decisions, it's the board who makes decisions. There are two current board members, Paul and Susie, who were on the board at the time, the decision was made. I want to say that people, decisions can go wrong.
If you had purchased Dargues and the gold price had dropped dramatically, I wouldn't object to that because that was outside your control. It would appear to me there was a general lack of good corporate governance in making this decision. It was a decision made without reference to the shareholders. I understand that that's not possible. It was a, if not a related party transaction, it was an incestuous transaction with Trafigura. I think for that reason, I would ask us shareholders who haven't as yet cast a vote, to vote against the reelection of Paul Harris, in that he was party to a very bad decision, which was not a decision about finance, but was a decision, essentially, the wrongness of it was the lack of corporate governance.
Thank you.
Thanks, Mr. Hunt. Unfortunately, I, it's unfortunate you're gonna vote against me, but that's fair enough. In relation to the Dargues acquisition, I would certainly push back and say there was absolutely no related parties issue in relation to Trafigura. They were a service provider to us, but they, the ownership of the assets sat in a separate vehicle. The corporate governance around that process was incredibly high with proper advice from our legal counsel. There's no issues whatsoever about that. It's unfortunate the asset hasn't performed, to what we expected. That's mining. Yes, we have to own that decision.
I should say, Paul got in before I could, so he was controlling the microphone. He's put his case. Look, the board owns the acquisition. The whole board owns the acquisition of Dargues, and it clearly has been a very disappointing outcome for shareholders. We own that, unfortunately. There are times when acquisitions work, there are times when they don't, and the geology of Dargues has absolutely been working against us, unfortunately. Despite the fact that the mining operation itself has actually gone okay, the geology hasn't, unfortunately. It is ownership that we all have. A disappointing outcome to that acquisition, for sure. Okay. Are there any more questions? Okay, thanks. I will then put to the meeting Resolution 2.
Please record your vote in relation to Resolution 2 by choosing for, against, or abstain on your screen or voting card. Thanks very much for that. I'll now move to Resolution 3, which is the election of Bruce Cox. The next item of business is the election, pardon me, of Bruce Cox as a non-executive director. The wording of the proposed resolution is shown on the screen. Bruce's credentials are outlined in the notice of meeting. Bruce is the chair of the board's audit committee. I now ask Bruce to address shareholders in regarding to his election. Over to you, Bruce.
Thank you. Thank you, Peter. I'm very pleased to have this opportunity. By way of background, I've worked in the mining, heavy industry, mineral processing sector for the last 40 years of my career. That would cross the steel, iron ore, platinum, copper, diamonds, uranium, bauxite, alumina, and aluminium sectors. You can tell that I've worked across the industry for quite a while. The first half of my career I was in the finance and CFO-based roles. Having done a Bachelor of Commerce and majored in Accounting and Management in my earlier life. The last half of my career, I've been predominantly been in operational roles, including CEO and chief operating officer positions.
I've lived and worked in Zimbabwe, Chile, the United States, Canada, UK, and of course Australia. I worked for BHP for 23 years and for Rio Tinto for 17 years. Hence all the different commodities that I've covered in that time. My last significant executive roles, I headed up the diamonds division for Rio Tinto. And that would include as number of real estate assets, the Argyle diamond mine that is rather iconic in Western Australia. That was part of my portfolio. More recently was the managing director of Rio Tinto's aluminium business in the southern hemispheres. That included four aluminium smelters, two alumina refineries, two bauxite mines and Gladstone power station.
My previous directors roles have included Energy Resources Australia, Hera, which is a uranium mining company, Queensland Alumina, the Australian Aluminium Council and Tomago Smelter. In addition to Aurelia, I'm on the Minerals and Minerals Processing Sovereign Wealth Fund board for Saudi Arabia. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Bruce. I should say, you've hit the ground running at a tremendous pace. already through your CDI have provided sage counsel to the board on some of the challenges in finance and accounting that we're presently facing. Bruce's election is unanimously supported by the rest of the board. The proxies received in relation to this resolution are shown on screen. Are there any comments or questions from shareholders in the room on Resolution 3? No. Ian, are there any comments or questions from
No.
Online? Thanks. Well, I then put the meeting Resolution 3 to the meeting. Please record your vote in relation to Resolution 3 by choosing for, against, or abstain on your screen or voting card. Thank you very much for that. As I mentioned at the beginning of the meeting, Resolution 4 has been withdrawn for following the departure, obviously of Dan Clifford. There is a question, or questions. I'm not sure. Question or question. One question on Resolution 4, and I would like to allow that shareholder to put that question now.
The question comes from Dan. Dan's not advised he'll ask in my outing, and it's for performance questions.
Yeah. The question's in relation to the Resolution four, which the question is, what's the background to establishing the resolution and then the following withdrawal? The Resolution four was in relation to performance rights to be issued.
To Dan Clifford, previous MD. Those rights, given he's a director, and any shares or rights issued to directors need shareholder approval under Listing Rule 10.14. We were seeking shareholder approval for those rights to be issued. Those rights were in relation to rights under the long-term incentive plan. Under Dan's previous remuneration structure, he was eligible for long-term incentive plan rights going forward. Those, given he's not currently employed, the board felt that it was the right decision to pull that resolution as those long-term incentive plan rights will not be issued to Mr. Clifford.
Thank you, Paul, for that comprehensive answer. Are there any more questions, Chair?
No more questions.
No more questions. Thank you. Well, as that is the last item of business, the online voting platform will now be closed. Can all shareholders voting online, please ensure that you have submitted your votes. Can all shareholders attending in person, please complete your voting card and a representative from Automic will collect them now. I'll allow another minute before I close the poll while we go around and collect those voting vote cards. Are there any more cards to collect in the room? No, I think we're done. I can therefore declare the poll closed. That concludes the formal part of today's meeting. The results of the poll will be declared and released to the ASX after the conclusion of the meeting.
In closing, I'd really like to thank you for your attendance and participation at this meeting, and your continued support for the company throughout the year. I acknowledge it was an exceptionally challenging year, and I reiterate the board and management's commitment to improving company performance. I now declare the 2022 annual general meeting closed. The directors, the management certainly welcome those who are in the building here to attending in person this AGM, to join us for a cup of tea and coffee after the meeting. Thank you very much for your understanding and your attendance today. Thank you for your continued support. Thank you