Good morning, and thank you everyone for making the time this morning. I have Peter and Ian with me as well online. Through the talk this morning, we'll refer to the June 2022 quarterly update and outlook that was posted on the platform this morning with the quarterly report. Just before we dive into that, I think considering the time of the year and the volume of results and calls that you have no doubt all listened to, and while there is impact and it's well understood, I'm pretty sure people really don't wanna be hearing about COVID-related issues and labor risk shortages. To us, it's gonna be all about the performance on what we can control and we have control, and what our response would be or will be to the uncontrollables.
Today, if we just move on to slide four of the presentation deck, we'll focus on the operational performance in the quarterly and year across production, AISC and capital, major project advancements across Cobar, the Great Cobar and the Federation operation, and then the adapting of the business to the headwinds that we, I think we can all see, with the economy and particularly project development risk.
Let's get going on the operational performance. If we can move on to slide six. After two really good years of solid improvement across, particularly health and safety and environment, we actually had a quarter of deterioration in this quarter. It's not that uncommon to see, when a business is doing it hard, where we do see injury rates start to go on the climb, in particular cases what we've seen here.
These injury rates, while we did see the uptick during the quarter, one thing for us is that instead of them being spread all over and ranging spread of injury types and bodily types, very much confined to hands and in particular with our contracting partners. So that's it. Makes it a lot easier for us to focus where our improvement requirements must go, and very clear on where we intervene to correct the issues. Environmental performance also ticked up during the quarter. During particularly the second half of the year with our governance and oversight over the operations, we initiated a number of internal compliance audits on our Development Consent across all three operations and tenements. During that, we uncovered some minor non-conformances against those consents.
In fact, a handful of those we actually needed to be self-reported, and that was the uptick, particularly in the last quarter through May and June. If I move over to slide seven. Our performance, I think, particularly in the last quarter, has absolutely not met the standard we or I think the shareholders expect from us. It's definitely a tough quarter. Gold down 5% on the full year guidance, although I must say against the expectations for the quarter, it was materially higher than 5%. Lead down 1% and zinc down 8%, although copper over by 12%, and I'll come to that in a minute.
I think disappointingly for us, there was a number of own goals on the controllables that really did contribute to the outcome, and we'll cover those in a little bit more detail shortly when Peter runs through the individual operations. Primarily what contributed to the gap was at Peak, where higher grade lead, zinc and gold ore campaign was actually delayed due to the operational interruptions. Instead, we ran a copper campaign, and that's the main cause of the miss on lead, zinc and gold at the end of the year, but that contributed to the beat on copper. All-in sustaining costs, as we updated the market last week, was over by 10% on the range to 17, just north of AUD 1,700 an ounce.
That variance is again, as we've described then, was primarily driven by the equipment deliveries for the Peak owner-operator transition and the late June TC settlement for Hera, which contributed approximately AUD 110 an ounce in the AUD 150 an ounce exceedance over the guidance. What was though really good to see was the capital investment, particularly in growth, which was mainly federation and consenting and exploration. Combine those two together with the equipment, we did manage successfully to invest a further AUD 20 million in the quarter, investing into the future for the business.
Also against the backdrop of what's happening with inflation, the scopes that were achieved, they were actually either achieved or exceeded instead of being reduced to contain the spend with that inflationary pressure, and that resulted in us being in or below the ranges we committed at the start of the year across sustaining growth and exploration and evaluation. While we did see growth in the gold equivalent, which you can see over the page, it was achieved, but the operating performance was, as I've mentioned earlier, not there.
Myself, in particular, and the management team, we own that result, and we can and will correct it over the coming quarters, as the growth is good, but it could have been stronger had we delivered a stronger quarter. With that, I'll hand over to you, Ian.
Thanks, Dan. Aurelia finished the June quarter with AUD 76 million of cash on hand. During June, sales revenue has largely remained unchanged compared to the prior quarter at AUD 101 million, with higher volumes offset by lower prices. Dargues's operating cash flow of AUD 4.3 million was positively impacted by higher quarter-on-quarter gold sales, with higher sustaining capital due to the stage three tailings lift, which was brought forward from FY 2023 to reduce the future risk of the tailings facility reaching operational capacity during periods of intense rainfall. Hera's operating cash flow for the period of AUD 3.9 million reflects the higher volume of sales offset by lower prices.
The settlement of the 2022 zinc benchmark treatment charges at a higher rate than provisional treatment charges, which resulted in overall higher expense in the quarter of AUD 4.5 million. Peak's operating cash flow for the quarter was impacted by higher operating costs, lower gold volumes, and weaker base metal prices. During the quarter, Peak took delivery of mobile equipment to support its transition to owner mining. The equipment was financed by AUD 6 million of equipment loans. Aurelia spent AUD 4.8 million on enabling work for the Federation project, including the box cut, AUD 1.3 million on studies and environmental approvals. Exploration spend was AUD 3.7 million on infill drilling and exploration at Federation, AUD 1.4 million on near mine exploration at Peak, and AUD 2.1 million on exploration at Dargues.
There was also a release of AUD 14.4 million of working capital from the prior quarter, which primarily related to a reduction of debtors. Aurelia continues to maintain its balance sheet strength with AUD 76 million of cash on hand, low gearing. During the quarter, it made debt repayments of AUD 4.3 million. The remaining balance of the term loan is now AUD 19.3 million. Aurelia also cashed back AUD 5.1 million of its bank guarantees used for environmental bonding. The restricted cash balance is now AUD 30.7 million. I'll now hand over to Peter for more detail on the operations.
Thanks, Ian, and welcome to everyone on the call this morning. I'd like to open by reiterating Dan's comments that the June quarter's performance was well below our expectations, especially for the Cobar district operations. Our management team is committed to delivering a better result through the coming financial year. Moving to slide 10 of the presentation, I'll talk about our recent operation performance, starting with the Peak Mine. Standing back at a high level, the metal production at Peak over the June quarter was a function of the lower processed ore tonnage and running one lead-zinc and two copper ore processing campaigns. We were unable to conduct the second lead-zinc processing campaign because of unplanned interruptions to the mining operations that delayed the delivery and processing of this ore into the September quarter.
Mining performance was tracking to plan until mid-May, when we experienced two abnormal production interruptions in the mine. The first event arose from damage to a conveyance tail rope in the shaft hoisting system, and that was soon after the existing tail ropes had been replaced under a condition-based maintenance regime. We moved to a less productive and more costly ore haulage or trucking to the surface, while the replacement tail ropes were manufactured and installed.
I'm pleased to advise that all hoisting resumed yesterday after those new tail ropes were installed. Our second unplanned event came about from a stope blast misfire that led to a suspension of all blasting activities across the site, while the circumstances relating to the incident were investigated. We subsequently simplified our blast initiation system to remove the potential for human error and a repeat event.
In the process plant, we took a major planned outage during the June peak months and also a number of refurbishment activities to the plant. These relied on specialist external labor, and unfortunately, the timing was fixed around the availability of that labor, and we're unable to process the ore that came out of the mine, post those two incidents in May. That led to an accumulation of ore stocks at the quarter end.
Our team at Peak are implementing a number of initiatives to lift our operational performance with emphasis on our asset management plans and recruitment of professional staff to support this work. We also have several cost containment initiatives underway, with benefits already being realized. For example, from the electricity supply agreement that commenced in January of this year and locked in prices that are substantially lower than current market tariffs.
Another positive development is the progress being made on the South Mine owner mining transition. The first units of the new mobile mining fleet are being commissioned now and will go to work with the higher trucks that have already delivered a noticeable productivity improvement at the mine. We're also in the process of recruiting operating and maintainer roles and sourcing consumables to support the owner mining transition. If we go now to slide 11, which talks to the performance of the Hera operation. Which in simple terms reflected a shortfall in ore processed and feed grades that were slightly above our plan, but lower on a quarter-to-quarter basis. The ore processing performance was constrained by mine production, which led to a drawdown of surface stocks over the quarter. In the mine, a combination of factors contributed to stoping delays and hence the lower ore production.
We experienced extensive ground support rehabilitation requirements in older mining areas, and this was in excess of what we'd anticipated. We had significant damage to an underground loader when it was buried in a stope during remote bogging operations, and that required significant component change outs to bring it back into service. We're also seeing longer delivery times from parts suppliers, and that has also exacerbated some of the loader downtime we've seen at the site. In response to these circumstances, our mining contractor, Redpath, has mobilized an additional loader to site and increased the spare parts holdings to minimize further disruption. I think it's also worth noting that as a mature operation, there's limited flexibility in our mining sequences at Hera.
This means that a delay to one stope creates a domino effect on scheduled production from within that stoping block, and that defers all production, as we saw in the June quarter. In response to this, and as stated in the March call announcement, we're establishing a fourth mining area in the Upper Hays zone, where stoping will commence imminently. This additional mining front will enable more reliable ore delivery and also contributes to Hera's mine life extension.
Moving on to our Dargues operation, whose results are summarized on slide twelve. It's great to see that the site delivered its best quarterly performance. The higher processing rates through the mill and a 26% grade uplift resulted in gold production of almost 12,000 ounces. That contributed more than half of the group's gold production for the quarter. It also allowed the all-in sustaining cost to reduce as the higher gold sales more than offset the higher activity levels at the site. I think it's also important to recognize that these results were delivered under some challenging conditions.
The site management team had to carefully control the water accumulation in the tailings dam following some abnormal rain events late last year and earlier this year. While doing so, they brought forward the stage 3 embankment lift on the dam to give us additional storage capacity. That also contributed approximately AUD 60 per ounce to the site's full year all-in sustaining cost. Another highlight was the operation of the backfill plant and reconfiguration of the underground reticulation system that allowed higher backfill placement rates. These are becoming increasingly important to us to cycle through stopes quickly to sustain your production rates.
In the process plant, we saw some really good runtimes as a result of our asset management regime and continued optimization of the flotation circuit, which reduced the gold losses to tailings and thereby assisted with our gold recovery results. Finally, the latest phase of the underground drilling program or the infill drilling program was completed. As data comes to hand from this program, it'll be used to define the extent of mineralized zones and upgrade grade estimates to be used for mine planning. Another infill drill campaign will commence in the current quarter when we have drill sites coming available deeper in the mine workings, and that will allow us to test extensions to the deposit at depth. I'll pause there, and I'll hand back over to Dan.
Thanks, Peter. I think clearly there's, you'll no doubt take away from this call, there's nothing more important on our minds right now than the operational delivery and certainty because it's that cash flow that we are investing straight back into the great pro-growth projects and future life extensions with the main assets in the group. Let's move over to slide 14 because what has been a real positive in this, and particularly with the headwinds of where the economy is, I suppose, particularly in Australia at the moment, has been this progress on these projects. Starting with Great Cobar, with the PFS and Maiden announced earlier this year, so I think January this year.
It's now being followed by what I would say is can be seen as a bit of a minefield in New South Wales. We've now received full government consent for the Great Cobar project, which is a fantastic achievement. It's giving us a really clear path to a valuable organic copper contribution into the business. A little bit later on in August, with our results at the end of August, we'll give more update and more detail on the timelines for the Great Cobar project. Move over to 15. Federation's also moving forward rapidly. You can just see the extent on slide four, slide 15, I should say, the extent of the surface works and excavations that have been undertaken. The box cut's at about 90% now, and we're just doing final cleanup and sidewall support.
The surface civil works are about 70%. You can see some of the shots there. I think more importantly, for those who would like to see more comprehensive footage of that, there was a video loaded onto our website this morning that you'll be able to see the full extent of the work that's happening there and all in preparation for us getting underground. I'll move over to slide 18, but before I go, I just wanna take a step back and, we've talked about the controllables and where our performance needs to be lifted. I think in thinking forward for where the business is, particularly in this environment, I mean, just looking at some of the external factors and some of the uncontrollables I've seen, as I see them, and what our response can be in these circumstances.
I know everyone will have heard this, particularly from the mining houses, but the hyperinflation period we're in right now is something that is coming at us. It has started in earnest three, four, five months ago, and it's still coming at us. We're seeing labor on 10%-12% increases, and that's let alone actually being able to get them. But also, there are energy costs rising, consumables and supplies are rising across reagents, explosives and steels, and in a lot of factors being reported at 25% escalations. In parallel with that, a swath of project blowouts across the sector, both internationally and domestically in Australia. Some of the latest results or latest data I've seen, particularly from commodity analysts, has been across, for example, 78 projects globally, particularly in copper.
Not one of them brought in on budget and brownfields and greenfields projects with CapEx blowouts between 30% and 50%. That's just hugely impacting on the expected returns from those projects. From our perspective with where we are right now is creating high risk or higher risk. It's what's really important for us now, particularly at this juncture in project timing that we have, is that what we won't do is just. I think all our shareholders would expect us to not do this too, and that is to charge in blindly into this environment with the assumptions that we made in the business six to 12 months ago. I think apart from the. Well, including the absolute drive for our operational performance is also executing on these great projects.
The cost that we're seeing put pressure on the lower grade material in all our projects, particularly at Peak. We've got high grade to low grade spread across two mines in six different mining areas. There are a number of activities that we'll take to curtail the cost pressure that's coming, but it is swimming against the tide. In some circumstances, some of the lower grade material may go negative, and that's to be understood if it's marginal. What is important for us, though, is that every ton we mine being positive and ensuring that going forward is gonna require review of our operating strategies, particularly cost structure and debottlenecking, to bring as many of those tons as positive as we can.
Additionally, I've talked about this a lot in strategy really for the last two years, and that is prioritizing the highest NSR from Federation, Hera, Peak and Great Cobar through our mills over their time frames. You put those two together, and there's the potential that we see some existing capacity open up if tons mined, well, not mining negative margin tons. The CapEx inflation we're seeing and project risk is making a lot of sense for us to assess next to the standalone option for Federation.
It's worth us definitely assessing the optimization of our existing mill capacity in the basin next to that standalone option. I think that for us is a logical step for where we are in the project junctures. I think the reality is at the moment, and I'd go as far as in saying it's not just a reality, but it's absolute benefit that we've got of having two polymetallic base mills in the basin is that we have options.
That puts us in, when I think about the prioritization of the highest NSR material, it's not loss of ore, it's a deferral of lower grade ore to later timing. Puts us in a great position to be able to adjust the business for the risks that we can see coming to the sector. I think that's the work we're doing now, through the feasibility as we draw that to a completion. I'm sure there's plenty of other mining houses out there doing exactly the same reviews that we're doing now. With that said, I'd like to hand over, please, Peter, to questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Our first question comes from Dylan Kelly with Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, team. Couple of questions from me. Just firstly, when I look at the results, I suppose we got a bit of sticker shock last week, with the production and the costs. If I look at your cash balance, for the period, well, sort of your net cash is up slightly, and you've reduced debt by AUD 5 million.
Can you just walk us through I just need to refer straight to the waterfall chart about how this has ended up this way. Is it largely a working capital unwind of all of the concentrate stockpiles that are sitting behind? Was it what was that sort of bridge between what looked like a loss AUD 30 million-AUD 50 million suddenly just seems to be benign, if I'm reading this correctly?
Yeah, I'll take that, Dylan. It's Dan. I think the operating cash flow from the business, you can see on the waterfall, there's no doubting there was a build of concentrate stocks. I think people will have seen that on the investor trip late last calendar year, the building of stock we had. The team took some really positive action on sourcing containers and additional rail cars to clear that concentrate through the course of that half. What you will see is that working capital coming back, as Ian mentioned, in terms of receivables in the business. That is flowing through to the business. We knew they were coming, therefore, it goes to the heart of what the operating performance at that point in time was. We continued the investment.
You're right, we did pay back debt. We also continue to cash back the business. We're looking forward to the Hera and the Federation Maiden Reserve to enable us to extend our lives out so we can get some, if we can, some relief on that cash backing. All in all, for us, a slight down in cash from AUD 80-AUD 76 as we continue to run the operations and reinvest into the future.
Okay, fair enough. In regards to the operations and what's happening at Hera and Peak, I understand that there's a number of different moving parts here. When we talk about the limited operating flexibility and your ability to change that in the short to medium term in the current environment, do your plans or your strategy to tackle that those sorts of problems have a tangible sort of near-term impact in terms of being able to provide that reliability back in the business?
Hi, Dylan. It's Peter here. Yes, in short, I mentioned that at Hera, we've only got three stoping blocks operating at the moment, and we felt the effects of that. With nowhere else to go when we had a hiccup in some of those areas through the last quarter, bringing in Upper Hays gives us a fourth area and a bit more flexibility in that regard. I will point out, and as you're aware, Dylan, Hera is a pretty mature mine, and we do have some old areas there that deteriorated more than we anticipated as we extracted stopes during the quarter. What that means is we have to go back and do a lot more ground support to make the area safe before we reenter.
We're not gonna be able to avoid that in the future, but having another mining block certainly gives us a little bit more flexibility than we had in the last quarter. At Peak, we've got the North Mine and the South Mine operating there. It's really in the last quarter been impacted by what's happened at the South Mine with the shaft outage. We have used that time to set up areas, so we give ourselves a clearer run into the current quarter. The team's done a great job having trucked all to surface now for close to two months in trying to sustain rates and make sure we get off to a running start with the shaft coming back into operation.
It will remain a challenging, underground mine, given that we are again in retreat sequences there, and that there's not a lot of tonnage in some of these stopes now. We're having to cycle those stopes pretty quickly to sustain the production rate at both Peak and Hera.
Okay, fair enough. Peter, just drilling into some of your final points there around the hoist, I understand that that's something that you've progressively been spending a lot of time on trying to improve reliability there. Any sense around what we should be thinking about for additional capital to ensure sort of we can get some higher availability out of the kit?
We've already been doing work, as you've alluded to, Dylan, around the shaft, keep that to improve that reliability. Its infrastructure is now well over 30 years old. When we give guidance, we'll incorporate capital that's allocated for that program through the year. I will point out that this, what happened was particularly disappointing because we had only just replaced the tail ropes.
That was done based on the condition assessment at the time, and the damage that occurred within a matter of weeks set us back on our tracks because we just installed the spare set of ropes we had on site. That hit the team pretty hard, I have to say. We certainly improved practice in the past when things were pretty well run towards failure. We're now in a much more proactive regime around how we run that shaft and also the process plant.
Okay, understood. I'll just ask one final one more, if I may. Dan and Peter, it sounds as if you're talking a lot about flexibility with in regards to what's happening with Federation. Am I right in hearing, perhaps there's a bit of a change in tune in terms of the strategy of building or expanding the Hera mill, and perhaps just utilizing the Hera mill or the Peak infrastructure to treat that material? Anything? Am I reading too much into that in terms of your wording?
Not really, Dylan. I think the key here is, as I mentioned earlier, the sheer risk of project development at the moment, costs that we're seeing coming through. As I said, I think shareholders would expect us right now to be assessing options to protect value in the business, and that's exactly what we'll do. Against a standalone, either complete rebuild or a standalone of the Federation plant is, also assessing against the absolute optimization of the existing facilities and additional tons on incremental basis to support their own capital.
We will look at that. As I mentioned, I think, it's actually, I don't think there's many mornings I don't wake up going, "Thank God we've got two polymetallic mills in the region." To support business there. It's a really great opportunity for us to really protect value going forward. It's an option that we will be assessing.
Okay, fair enough. I'll pass it along and circle back.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Matthew Griffiths, a private investor. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Just with reference to the announcement previous today on FY2022 production. The commentary seems to focus around on key growth projects, being Federation Great Cobar. I know the exclusion of Dargues amongst this, which was acquired less than two years ago, is it no longer viewed as a key driver of growth within Aurelia?
No, that's not our intention there with it. It's. We've got timelines in place for Dargues in terms of modifications to consents, the continuous, I guess, improvement or expansion of the existing facilities. What we're really waiting on there is outcomes of drill results. At this point in time, we're still awaiting some of the outcomes for that exploration. We still see Dargues as an important contributor in the portfolio. It's just that it doesn't have the level, probably the level of capital expenditure and project expenditure that we're looking at on the two current projects for the Cobar Basin.
Further, is it meeting your expectations versus when you first purchased it?
No, it's not. I think we're pretty clear in the earlier flag this year of the year-end impairment on the assets that we flagged during the March quarter, late in the March quarter. I think that alone says that it's not meeting our expectations. The thing for Dargues is that on its physicals, tonnes mined, development, throughput, backfill, feed rates, it is meeting our expectations. It is clearly the grade that hasn't and I can't put it any other way other than that we flagged that issue early with the impairment. Logically, it is not meeting our expectations on that front when we purchased it.
Thanks. That's all my side.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Anthony Wallace, Private Investor. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good day, Dan. Just wanting to follow up on a question asked a little while ago with regard to the amount of marketing and promotion that the company was gonna be undertaking, and that you said that you had engaged someone within the staff to improve that. I've just recently we've had Noosa Mining Conference, Gold Coast Resources Rising Stars, Sydney Gold Conference, and we've got really little companies out there with one deposit, one project, spruiking that and getting themselves out onto the market. Haven't seen anything from Aurelia. What's happening?
Yeah, I think we recognize the Noosa Mining Conference. For us, that's on our radar next year. It certainly has evolved a long way in the last couple of years. For us, we've been focusing on some of the more virtual events, including some of the domestic broker-led events as well. It's certainly on our radar. I know we have mentioned earlier that there needs to be some more activity in that area. I think we're certainly aiming for that. There's also, in some circumstances, conferences that we try to get into that we actually can't get an invite for. It's a bit of a mix. I think I take your point, and it is certainly on our radar.
Look, some of the broker-led conferences, that's fine, but the problem is that unless you're a client of that broker, you don't really see anything. You don't really get that mass exposure like you're getting at these other Diggers & Dealers and all these other sorts of things that is around. The broker ones are okay, but you're just not getting any exposure from them.
That's a fair comment.
Look, there's one other question that I would appreciate if you would take back to a board meeting, and that is directors, management buying shares on the market. I know personally I would like to see some directors buying at the moment to show that they're supporting the company, visibly supporting the company with that. I know everyone has various reasons why they do and don't do that.
I notice Adam McKinnon that was with you guys for years, started over at Magnetic and he's had at least two or three purchases online, and that's just boosted morale among shareholders. Now, right now, with looking at our current share prices being as low as it is, those windows of opportunity when the board is able to buy shares, can I suggest that be considered?
I'll take it forward, Anthony, but as you mentioned earlier, everyone has their personal constraints in how they invest personally. I'll certainly bring it up.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Evans with Acova Capital. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much. Thanks, Dan, for the update. A couple of simple ones. Lastly, and apologies if I missed this in the announcement, but you haven't provided guidance for FY23. When do you expect to do that? Second question is just around Federation and your comments on capital buyout. I mean, I appreciate it's very difficult for mining companies to put a line in the sand because the sand keeps moving with CapEx costs, et cetera. There's projects where a 30% CapEx buyout can blow up the IRR, and then there's projects where a 30% CapEx buyout doesn't actually blow up the IRR. I would've thought Federation was in that latter camp. Do you f
I mean, how do you think about flex testing? Well, this is our base case CapEx and, but even if it do you run sensitivities and perhaps show the market in due course that sensitivity and go, "Well, the IRR is still pretty robust." Is that how you think about it? Or one of the things you think about?
Yeah. I'll come back to the first question first. I was gonna cover that in my closing comments on guidance and what's coming up. I might deal with that there, Michael, if that's all right.
Sure.
On the second one, I'm not sure I agree with you that a 30% blowout on CapEx isn't damaging in any circumstance, irrespective-
Oh, no. It's always damaging.
30% relative to size. It always is, and it can't not be.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
I think for us taking a 30% risk when there's other alternatives in a business that don't erode the value of the asset or the project over time is w orthy of us reviewing. I think we've always g otta look at these from cash as well as value. We will assess those options. I don't agree that a 30% blowout on a big project isn't as damaging. I would not be at all open to letting that even happen.
No, I'm not, I'm not suggesting you do. I just pulled 30% out of the air, somewhere between as you mentioned, out of those 78 projects that have been studied by someone. Yeah. There's been an average of something like that or more. But yeah. Okay. Obviously any sort of allocation of capital is weighed up against all possibilities.
Yeah.
that are organic, I suppose, and
Yeah, it is.
That sort of-
It is.
There's IRRs for projects, and then there's IRRs for capital elsewhere, isn't there? Okay. Understood.
I think what it comes to is that the world has changed, Michael, in the last four to five months. We make assumptions at the start of a financial year, and we guide on those. If there is a change, we can re-guide. Certainly when it comes to project studies, and in this year, we've done a PFS on Great Cobar and just drawing to completion of FS on Federation. Just adhering to those assumptions from 12 or 18 months ago when we kicked those studies off doesn't make sense with what's come at us in the last four five months.
I think shareholders would expect us to review what we're doing on that front and make sure that when it comes to capital deployment, that it's protecting value and driving the highest return we can get based on the decisions at that point. We look at it and it's at the moment we're assessing that option. Again, the standalone option, which was the original scope of the feasibility. Let us get the work done, and we'll see where it goes.
Yeah. Yeah. No, that's good. Thanks, Dan. Look forward to seeing that work when it comes out. That's all from me. Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Glenn Rosen and private investor. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, gents. How are you going? My question is really circling back to the actual dollars in the all-in sustaining costs, which obviously is a big leap for the quarter. There was some numbers bounced around for the one-off numbers on capital and so forth. I just need some clarification about the AUD 30 million additional in all-in sustaining costs for the quarter, and which of those are more one-off or future capital investment based.
Hi, Glenn. It's Dan. The key contributor really, if I think about when it comes to all-in sustaining cost, it's usually always the denominator being gold and then base metal offsets, so or credits. That's where the majority of it came for us. We could see the operating performance, and we could estimate and forecast forward what it was looking like. Taking the equipment at the back end of the year and then the recent changes in the TC costs put us out of the range, and that's what we've been focused on. The sustaining capital in the business at the moment, if I think about it just from a general point, it's predominantly usually underground mine development for all the assets.
If development's up, sustaining CapEx is up. Added to that, we had on top of that, the Dargues TSF lift that was brought forward into this year. That is an acceleration forward of a project that was planned next year. The new equipment coming in was taken up in sustaining instead of being treated as a finance lease and a cost. It's a one-off as well, and that is direct investment in getting to own or operate. Primarily, we will see if there's a lift in sustaining capital a lot higher than planned that will go through to all-in sustaining costs, that usually, the primary driver of that is underground development.
Right. i t's AUD 60 million in costs for the quarter, which is well above AUD 35 million, AUD 35 million-AUD 40 million typically in a quarter. Most of that is in sustaining capital compared to normal.
Sustaining capital and there was also.
Sorry, I couldn't hear.
Sorry. Yeah, my apologies. Sustaining capital as well as increased treatment charges at Hera, which we highlighted.
Right.
AUD 4.5 million there.
Increased treatment charges?
Yeah.
Is that a brought forward or just because of the material we were treating?
No, that's a change in the market. It's not a brought forward. It's a cost.
Okay. It's a change in some sort of accounting system or?
No. Sorry, I've been muted. Oh, God. There's not a change in the accounting system. The treatment charges are settled by the market, and that settlement took place for the 2022 treatment charges in the current quarter. Therefore, in the current quarter at Hera, we had the treatment charges for the quarter, as well as a catch-up from the March quarter reflected in the current quarter. There was an increase in cost from that perspective.
It's a prior quarter adjustment in part.
Correct. Because the treatment charges for the whole market settled in the June quarter, and prior to that, we used provisional estimates.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, then please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Our next question comes from Colin Peak, Private Investor. Please go ahead.
Hi, Dan, and team. Labor. Your labor increase is you're expecting it to increase by 10%-12%. Is that correct?
At this point, hi, Colin, it's Dan. We're expecting what we are seeing, I should say, and seeing in the market and listening to other businesses in the market, we are seeing and expecting something along those lines coming forward at us. We internally, we don't see necessarily those raises, but in terms of what we see from the external market, contractors, casual labor, et cetera, that's what we are expecting to be able to see coming at us.
Okay. I've just been looking at the history of the employees at Aurelia. In July 2019, there was around 85 employees. You're now sitting around 169, 170, an increase of 99%. Now, can you tell me what is the current percentage of labor to overall sales and confirm in relation to this industry what the ideal labor percentage should be? That includes both direct and indirect labor. Is that monitored that way?
Not necessarily to sales, it isn't, Colin. I mean, there's typical benchmarks of run of mine tons per full-time equivalent, et cetera, that float around in various businesses, but not the way you've expressed it there.
Right.
I think what is needing to be understood here is that there has been increase in full-time labor within Aurelia over the last three years. There's a couple of contributing factors to that. What we've got to remember is that we acquired an operation in that time with Dargues, and there was full-time employment arrangements made with the management team and staff for that operation. We also took away from being contract operated, the processing facility at Dargues, and that's now operated by full-time Aurelia staff as is Hera, Peak, and now Dargues.
The increases are coming from bolting acquisition and where we will convert from contract provision of that service or labor to in-housing it or owner operating it. As Peter mentioned earlier, we're gonna see that again in terms of the decision to transition the Peak Underground, or certainly the South Mine underground to owner operator labor away from externally provided. We will see full-time labor numbers go up again, but well, it will be a direct offset against externally supplied or contract labor.
Just touching on Dargues, say, your comments some time ago, we believe this transaction ticks all the boxes for Aurelia shareholders and offers excellent short and long-term value growth potential. For investors that are listening right now, what would be the difference between short and long term? We know that it hasn't met expectations, but going in the future, where do you see this? Is it a year, two years? Obviously, there's a lot of concerned shareholders out there at the moment, given the current plight of the share price, and I just think we need some reassurance here.
Yeah. I'd say along the lines of what I answered before is that, the grade wasn't to our expectations. The rest of the physical operations of the asset have been.
Yeah.
I think we flagged that, so it didn't meet our expectations on that front. We've got to and we have been investing in the exploration on the assets and cost containment to ensure we've got margin. Those results, really we are still waiting on some of those to come through. A lot of the focus has been on underground infill drilling to increase the certainty of, particularly any grade control level for what we've got in the near term coming at us. I think we still have an exploration horizon there to drive what we think and how long we think the asset can go for.
We are still investing in that exploration through the course of this year and FY2023 to ensure that we can find additional value in the asset if it's there.
Right. Let's keep our fingers crossed. Okay, thanks, Dan Clifford.
Thanks, Colin.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I now hand the call back to Mr. Clifford for closing remarks.
Thanks, Peter. Just in summary, I think we talked through the operational performance. Just to round up on that, we own that result, and we'll correct it. I think Peter, myself and Peter have expressed our determination to be able to turn that around. I think the impacts during that quarter have been corrected in terms of the shaft work and the blasting and the loader reliability in particular at Hera. I think we will see a much stronger performance as we come out of that quarter. Our projects are advancing well, and we're happy with where they're heading in terms of right through from government consents right through to the execution, particularly with the activity going on at Federation on the surface now.
As I mentioned, it puts us in a great position to be able to adapt our business now really because we've got flexibility in terms of milling capacities. Back to Michael's question earlier, it really does. The assessment of that flexibility we have in front of us now at this point helps us adapt the business to these risks that are coming at us in this economic cycle. That's a great position for us to be in. We'll get that work done. What that leads to is what we have got coming up over the course of this quarter. We are expecting a Federation exploration update.
A lot of the drilling there now has been completed, certainly in this tranche, focused on resource definition, and we will update in the coming weeks as we get the final assays in. Those assays will also help inform the final outcomes for the Federation PFS. Once we do that, it comes into the Federation feasibility and options that we're looking at there that will also enable us to print the maiden on Federation. From that then allows us, because Federation expenditure is near term, it allows us to do a couple of things. One is provide guidance for the business, again, back to Michael's question, will that be in during this quarter, it's late August, particularly on CapEx.
Pending the assessments we make on milling capacity, the additional or existing milling capacity allows us to provide further guidance and development schedules. Of course, more importantly, the full year results at the end of August. Included in there will also be the FY2022 MRO because we'll be able to put in the Federation maiden reserve into that as well. There's quite a lot triangulating all over this quarter, and we're looking forward to being able to update shareholders, all our shareholders with what those outcomes are looking like. Okay. With that done and said, thank you very much for your time this morning and we'll no doubt, you'll no doubt hear from us towards the end of August. Thanks very much.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.