Thanks, Kate, and good morning to everyone who's dialed in this morning. Really appreciate your time. Today, with members of the Executive Leadership Team and Board, we're proud to share our financial year 2025 full-year results with the market. Today on the call with me is Martin Cummings, the CFO, and we'll take you through the results, which sort of reinforce the strong message we've been presenting on our performance. You'll note from the presentation all our key metrics are trending in the right direction. These results highlight the strength of our strategy and the dedication of our people. We have delivered outstanding safety improvements while substantially increasing earnings and profits, while maintaining a strong balance sheet. Importantly, we've achieved this while also investing in our future through the development of our new Federation mine and also many projects in our portfolio.
We are building a business that's safer, stronger, and positioned for sustainable growth in a very stable mining region in Australia, which is a great news story for Aurelia . I'll be referring to the slides as we move through the pack. On slide one, firstly, our forward-looking statements. I'd just ask people to please reference these at your leisure. They're important to obviously recognize what's in those. On to slide two. Financial year 2025 has been a year of delivering our production guidance with the improved safety and also delivering our strategy to really improve our operational performance while growing our business. Firstly, we've improved our safety performance, as I just said, from FY 2024. As I continue to say, nothing's more important than our people going home every day safely, and all jobs can be done safely.
We've achieved also our guidance targets, which is an excellent result for all of these metrics. We continue to progress with our focus on operations excellence to deliver higher profits into the future, and we believe there is more we can unlock still as we progress. Federation mine has successfully commenced production, is progressing well in the ramp-up, and the Peak processing plant has been enjoying the high quality and good throughput from the ore from Federation with some excellent recoveries. Importantly and notably, the Federation project has remained under budget, which was approved by the Board, and we intend to replicate this outcome in Great Cobar Project also. The Great Cobar Project was approved and now has started execution of developing twin declines towards the ore body from the new Cobar operating pit portal entrance, and we're using whatever infrastructure, existing infrastructure we can to build this business.
This will allow a medium-term deliverable to progress towards more copper and gold from FY 2028 as we've committed to the market. Our board's also approved the upgraded capacity for the Peak processing facility, which will enable our strategy in the Cobar region to go from up to 1.1 million- 1.2 million tons capacity using very capital-efficient methodologies, repurposing equipment both from Dargues, but also giving great financial returns to our investors through these projects. We've also continued exploring the region both in the vicinity of Peak and Nymagee along the fault lines that run between Great Cobar down to Federation with a clear focus that we've reported to the market on Nymagee resource and also the Federation West to name a few priorities. We'll talk more about these later in the presentation.
Lastly, and importantly, we've been successfully and sustainably closing the Dargues mine and obviously progressing remediation works and continue to sell the assets to the market or transfer and repurpose to Peak, Great Cobar, or the Federation mine, which obviously saves us capital. As I stated up front, this has been a very successful year for delivery for the company, the size of Aurelia, and can only be achieved with really good people and leaders working hard in the background, all working towards unlocking our full potential. I'll move on to the next slide, which is the FY 2025 highlights. This slide really demonstrates some of the metrics on how well we're progressing.
We'll discuss these metrics in more detail, but I really want to call out this really shows the strength of our business and the performance for this year and discipline delivery of our strategy that Aurelia management are pushing forward with. Some really strong EBITDA numbers, good EBITDA margins, good profits, good margins on our sort of products, improved safety, and a strong balance sheet supporting our business going forward, which we'll talk more about. Just moving on to the next slide, which is on sustainably delivering value. We're very happy that we've improved our total affordable injury frequency rate, which means we're having less injuries, which is fantastic and definitely our key priority. We still had too many injuries in FY 2025, mainly hand injuries, people putting their fingers and hands in pinch points and lines of fire, causing cuts and abrasions.
Through improved field leadership and focus on hazard identification, our take-fire process, we will get better at this, but obviously we've still got a way to go if people are having hand injuries. We also delivered a really good environmental incident reporting outcome as well, which you can sort of see on the presentation. Importantly, our social capital is our license to operate, and we've continued to work with our community. We've established a community hub, which has been a great success for the company. We've also continued spending money on local procurement for the region and have been very diligent in our donation process in the Cobar region. Obviously, Cobar is very central to our business, and some of the spending items that have gone through a donations committee this year have included bringing the Sydney Youth Orchestra to attend the Cobar High School to perform with the students.
We've done sponsorship with the Copper City Men's Shade, really supporting the local Cobar Roosters League Club across all ages, but also proud to sponsor two women teams this year for under 13s and under 15s. We also put money into the Lillian Brady Retirement Village, the only aged care center in Cobar. Really making a difference with the money we're generating from the business to really put back into the community and make it a great place to live and work. On the next slide, I move on to production guidance achieved. In terms of our production guidance, all commodities were within guidance. Again, showing the discipline delivery of our team to ensure we meet these targets we presented to the market.
As we don't report all-in sustained costs anymore, I thought it's just worth calling out though that we did actually achieve a $2,037 per ounce and FY 2024 was $2,035. Pretty much the same result, but with headwinds of higher costs and obviously less gold produced in FY 2025 compared to FY 2024. This really shows the performance of the business to deliver our cost structure and also to get our volumes up for other commodities since Dargues has closed. Pretty robust effort overall for the full year for our production guidance and really sort of shows the potential of our business. A couple of key drivers not shown on this particular page for production guidance, and it's not a guidance set of numbers, but I want to call them out nonetheless. That is we've really been focusing on increasing our development meters at Peak and at Federation.
Obviously, we're going to continue to push that into FY 2026, especially as we bring Great Cobar meters into our business as well. The team's achieved several monthly records throughout the year at Peak over the last six months, which has been great to see as we continue to ramp up the meters, which provide support for our mining. Federation also delivered better development meters over the year than was budgeted, once again showing that we're making a step change in our performance, really looking at how we can get the development progressing in front of our working areas to provide suitable areas for production that can be set up safely and with enough time to ensure that we can meet our targets guidance numbers.
Beyond just the results, we're also putting a large focus in FY 2025 and into FY 2026 on utilization and availability of equipment and the implementation of our mine operating system. This will all work towards supporting our $100 a ton aspirational target that I've set for teams to really increase our cash margin and deliver our guidance going to FY 2026. I'll hand over to Martin to talk through some of the positive results from our financials.
Thanks, Bryan. Moving on to slide seven, this slide captures the improvement year on year that then leads to report today. Our group EBITDA is a 69% increase on the prior year at $122 million, and that equated to an EBITDA margin of just over 35%. I guess the pleasing bit for me within that EBITDA result for the group was the performance at Peak this year. Peak's EBITDA increased from $55 million last year to $122 million this year on the back of higher gold production and of course higher prices. This really was a fantastic result and was able to offset the impact of closing Dargues in the first quarter. That did result in lower gold production for the year. As you can see on the donut chart, gold remains really important to us and is the dominant revenue source in our revenue mix.
As we outlined in the Investor Day, we'll now start the transition with Federation ramping up to a higher proportion of base metals production. Within our group EBITDA result, you may notice we also did recognize some sundry income of $7.3 million, which is the item relating to sale of excess biodiversity credits that we've been reporting through the quarterlies. That is a one-off that we've taken through EBITDA, but pleasing that we can realize the cash on those excess biodiversity credits. It was also great with our group EBITDA higher and lower depreciation and amortization with the closure of Dargues that we were able to return to a profit after tax this year. This is a significant milestone for us. It is actually the first full year profit that we have recognized since 2021.
From here, our focus is on cost reductions and they are now in full swing at Peak. It is pleasing that our all-in sustaining cost was able to be maintained even on lower gold production and generate a great cash flow for the year. Now we're going after the $100 a ton mining cost target that Bryan's taken you through. That team is in place and the work is underway. Finally, you may note some comments about Federation and commercial production. We do intend to report Federation as a commercial operation from the 1st of July. That's based on actual performance so far this financial year, but also our outlook, particularly for this quarter. I will stress that the EBITDA that Federation will generate in the early periods will be modest, but that will build up over the year as mining tons ramp up.
Just shifting to slide eight, I have talked a lot about the balance sheet this year and it's something we're very proud of. Just to recap, we're finished with over $110 million of cash in the bank and over $145 million in liquidity and no drawn debt. Peak's operating cash flow, and that's after sustaining capital of $96 million, was a huge jump from the $37 million it generated in the previous year. Along with a small contribution from the remaining Dargues production, it more than funded the combined $84 million in growth at Federation and for exploration. I might just focus on the last item before the June cash number in the waterfall around restricted cash. During the year, we did reach the credit limit on our Trafigura performance bond facility, which meant we had to post an additional $17.5 million in restricted cash.
The Trafigura facilities are now into the third year, and with that, the cash backing on the performance bonds starts to be requiring us to put cash up and also the loan note starts to step down. This year, right now, I'm going to commence a refinance of the facility. That's both the performance bond facility and the loan note. The main objective is to get that higher performance bond facility and get that restricted cash back. I'm also looking at a facility at a lower cost than what we have at the moment. We'll start the preparation work on that this month, and I'm looking to close that new facility sometime during H2. What that will mean is we will continue to cash back some of the performance bonds in line with the Trafigura facility.
Ultimately, as I say, once we close that facility, that cash is intended to be returned. In summary, a really satisfying year from a financial perspective where we returned to profit, we generated excellent cash flow, and we have a strong balance sheet now that's able to fund our investments in Great Cobar and the Peak expansion. I'd just like to thank the Aurelia Finance team and the EY team. Many of you are on the call today for your efforts putting this together. It has again been quite a smooth financial year, and that's the result of your hard work. Thank you from myself and from Bryan. I'll hand back to you, Bryan.
Thanks, Martin. As Martin just spoke through, if you go to the next slide, our pathway of 40,000 tons. FY 2025 has been a very important year for us to reshape our business and have Peak working well, getting Federation now ramping up and delivering EBITDA. While we start commencing our next set of journeys, which is really to get Great Cobar developed and obviously get the optimization projects well underway, which I'll talk to in a few minutes. As you can sort of see from this slide, we have a clear pathway where we really are taking it step by step sequentially, making sure that we can obviously fund our growth in a very clear way and being very clear with an intention around how we manage the balance sheet to get there.
With the focus we have right now and with the plans we have right now, we believe that we will and fully we can self-fund that growth and maintain a strong balance sheet over the period of time. That pathway to 40,000 copper equivalent tons is definitely in our sights and all the various projects approved by the board have allowed us to move in that direction over the next two years. Very exciting to be part of Aurelia when we can actually generate this cash, have these profits now, and look at how we can actually optimize our business going forward in the next couple of years and a strong position we actually have with the pipeline to support this also. I might just move on to the next slide, which is the Great Cobar Project slide. In FY 2025, we did approve the Great Cobar Project.
I just want to call out some key highlights for this project. It's very exciting for us and our investors. At spot prices when we presented this, the rate of return IRR was 33%, NPV was $164 million. Prices have improved since then. Capital is at $92 million. That hasn't gone up since then, which is great. What it's going to give us is 3.6 million tons production target, 2.3% copper and 0.9 g per ton gold. That's really as we know it now. As we presented during the presentation of the Great Cobar Project and Andrew alluded to, there is actually exploration holes that are under the production area that we've identified, have good grades, and really we're limited by drilling to know what the full potential is beyond what we've actually declared to the market.
As we progress down the twin declines and get closer to the ore body, we'll be setting up a drill platform to start punching holes down under that area to open up the potential for this particular project and operation for the future. Very exciting for us as we progress this project as it is. As I stated earlier, we have all the approvals in place now and we intend to run this project very tightly like we have with the Federation project so that there's no surprises to the market. I'll move on to the next project, which has been discussed and presented on the next slide, which is a project we had approved by the board in FY 2025 as well, just to recap for those who may not be up to speed with it.
Importantly, the optimisation project was all about how do we grow in the safest and most efficient manner that we can use our existing infrastructure and allow us to present the best returns we can for the business from our investment. That includes getting better recoveries, getting better throughput, being able to utilise the resource in the area of both Federation and Peak and Great Cobar to really maximise revenue potential. The optimisation study really highlighted that if we went and did the work on the Peak processing plant rather than reusing Hera at this stage, then we'd get better returns for our investors. That's what the project was all about. The three parts of the project are in the slide and they've really been approved by the board and are in execution phase now as we talk.
As you can recall, FY 2025 was a major milestone with getting our government approvals to haul the 600,000 tons from Federation to Peak. It was previously 200,000. Now we have that sort of haulage capacity and really now as Federation ramps up, we intend to have these projects in place to be able to deal with the increased volume and hopefully we'll see this towards the end of this year and then start of FY 2027 really ramping up nicely in line with both projects and Federation to progress towards our 1.1 million- 1.2 million tons and ultimately move into our 40,000 copper equivalent tons into the market in FY 2028. Very exciting times for the company, very sequential. We have a project team dedicated to this to ensure we can deliver it very much using similar principles that we've done inside the company already.
I'm just going to move on to the next slide, which is exploration. Just to recap for FY 2025, our exploration team have continued to deliver excellent results this year to really unpack the potential for the region. As I've said, and Andrew Graham said in the past as well, you know what limits us with our potential is really just drilling. As you can sort of see, we are continuing to drill Federation West and Nymagee in FY 2025, and that's also progressing in FY 2026. You just got to look at the various sort of numbers that we have presented on the drilling. It's really amazing the sort of potential we're dealing with. We just need to continue drilling those regions to continue to unlock them and see what we can make for a potential pipeline for our future.
The main focus will be in FY 2026, we'll continue to search the additional lenses around the main ore body at Federation West, like Federation West around Federation, and similarly for Nymagee we're going to focus on the north areas and the central areas between the main ore body and the north sort of area. This is a very low-cost organic option for us if we get the resource that we're looking for, makes some good results. Just to recap too on those results, those announcements we did on Federation West and Nymagee have basically been June 2024, February 2024, and also June 2025, just for your reference if you want to look back and understand what the results have looked like in the past. That's FY 2025. Martin's highlighted the really good financial results.
We've talked about our guidance and operational results, and obviously we believe we have a lot more to give, and we will be pushing for a lot more in FY 2026. The ELT is very committed, as so is the leadership teams on site to make this business really sort of hum in a really good way in terms of delivering shareholder value. Our key focus areas in that light for FY 2026 is really about increasing our cash flow from the gold and base metals production and develop our copper growth options as we move forward with Great Cobar and having our processing facility at Peak set up to really take the ore and generate lots of value for that.
When I call out these key points on the slide, it's really around making sure that we continue to really focus on discipline capital delivery and making sure we retain a strong cash balance sheet. Obviously, as a leadership team, we have developed contingency plans and we have got options that we're looking for and levers we can pull as we need to ensure we deliver that strong balance sheet. We obviously want to continue safely delivering improved productivity from our existing operations to really maximize that potential of cash flow and to fund our growth and hopefully have excess. We want to make sure the balance sheet remains strong. We want to make sure that we can safely ramp up Federation in line with our production, and if not, even go beyond that by bringing more production online in FY 2026 and FY 2027.
We want to make sure that we can deliver a Great Cobar Project development milestones, similarly deliver the project like we did for Federation, and hopefully have FY 2028 set up for success with Great Cobar kicking off. We want to focus on our pipeline of organic options. That's really our exploration, looking at what we can do from a regional point of view. We still have the Hera plant available at some stage if we want to look at that as an option to grow. Right now, for the next two years, it's really about making sure we deliver what we've committed to the market and do it with a good profit and good cash flow outlook.
To do that, we really need to make sure we continue attracting and retaining the right people in our business to really make sure that they are with us, they grow with us, and we become the company people want to work for in the region because of our delivery and our sort of pipeline of options to grow the business sustainably. With that said, I'd like to thank once again you guys for dialing in, and I want to hand it back to Kate, and we might move to some 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're on a speaker phone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from the line of Adam Baker with Macquarie. Please go ahead with your question.
Yeah, thanks, Martin. Obviously, been a lot of comprehensive updates from you over the past couple of months. I've just got one question. Martin, I think you mentioned about the debt facility refinancing plan during FY 2026. You mentioned the second half. Is that the second half of calendar this year, or are we talking the first half of calendar next year?
Good day, Adam. No, I was referring to H2 of the financial year, so before June 2026.
Okay, thank you. Just wondering on the debt refinancing, what can it incorporate? Are we looking at quashing the undrawn loan note? The Trafigura performance bond facility has been mentioned and obviously reached capacity there. Will those get tied up together with a new facility? What sort of facility are you looking at? Would you be looking at a project finance facility, or are you looking at other options like a revolving credit facility like some of your peers have done? Just wondering how you're thinking about hedging, which may or may not go along with the future debt facility.
Yeah, I am looking at more of a corporate facility, and it's really, I'm quite open at the moment, Adam. We sort of haven't even gone to the market yet. What I'm looking for is ideally a revolving credit facility, an upsized performance bond facility that we can roll the $7.8 million that we've got in restricted cash at the moment into, but also gives me a bit of headroom as well for any other increases. New South Wales are reassessing how they do rehab counts at the moment. I just want to have some headroom available if any increases come through from that. More of a corporate facility. In terms of counterparties, it's quite open in terms of whether it is something similar to what we've got or whether it's more of a bank club style.
I'll really let the process go through and we'll see what the best deal we've got. I know that's a bit of a loose response, but right now we're preserving all options. The intention is to have an upsized revolving performance bond facility and a bit of a standby credit facility.
You're pretty open to hedging that may or may not go along with the facility?
We're sort of open and maybe, you know, lonely in this camp, but you know, we use hedging to protect our balance sheet. I'm not sort of thinking about hedging in terms of mandated through debt facilities right now. I'm sort of thinking about it more in terms of the balance sheet and delivering the growth project. I'll continue to consider hedging definitely.
Okay, that's all I've got. Thanks, guys. Have a good day. Cheers.
Thanks, mate.
Thanks.
Your next question comes from the line of Roy, a private investor. Please go ahead with your question.
Good morning, Roy here. Thanks for delivering a profit for the full year. Congratulations. My question is, sorry.
I just said thank you.
Yeah, it's good. My question is, the infill drilling at Federation produced a change in mining plan. Has that altered the amount of ore that was estimated in the Federation body? The other question I'd like to ask is, will the upgrading of the plant at Peak have an effect on the processing rates for the year that's done?
Yeah, so thanks for the questions, Roy, especially on Federation. We've been drilling the infill drilling and obviously doing grade control work over FY 2025. As we reported to the market, we wanted to understand obviously the change in direction and the impact of it, if any. We are in the process at the moment of working through our MROR, which will be delivered in October. That will actually have all the calculations. The reason I asked that question that way is we finished, we closed the drilling off at the end of June, which is when we said, okay, that's all the assays we'll take from here and put into the models. The models get done, and then obviously the engineers will put the shapes for the slopes around it, and we'll get some feedback in the coming months as we move forward.
On that one it's a bit of a work in progress as we get towards our MROR process. As we've said before, what's important to us is that we're delivering the metal. As we discussed with the information we did tell the market that we had was that the area that we drilled and mined in the top part of the mine, the payable metal was actually there. That's the most important thing for us. If the metal's there and we can truck it to Peak and truck less tons, but higher, better grades and better payabilities, that's a big win for us. That's what we have reported to the market, but we haven't come back with any new information until the results are finalized in the models over the coming months.
On your second question regarding the throughput, yes, the design of the three projects that we're putting in place at Peak, one is the thickener, which does give us a better backend capacity, gives us better recoveries and also of different consumables. At the front end, we're putting in a materials handling crusher, which will actually allow us to reduce the size of the ore coming in from both Federation and from in the future Great Cobar and from the North mine. That will actually allow the size to come into the mill and will allow us to increase our throughput. That's one of the key components of both the materials handling and the bore mill, to basically allow us to definitely increase our throughput through the plant and really take out all the latent capacity throughout the plant by maximizing the input to the maximum level effectively.
As we get towards the end of this year and FY 2027, those items will be installed and we'll start seeing those volumes ramp up in line with that throughput that's in those projects effectively. Just want to check, Roy, does that answer your question you're asking?
Yeah, that's good. That's a good answer. Yeah, thanks very much. I understand.
In addition to the projects which are on the page, the team on site also installed additional filter plates for zinc and lead at the back of the processing plant, and that's also going to help us as well. They weren't a major project. Just sort of one of those things they need to install to get obviously better throughput at the back end of the plant. That's installed and working now and working very, very well to give us, especially with the high grades we get out of Federation, we obviously need to make sure the filter plates at the back are working effectively. It's definitely helping us.
I gather from what you say that the upgrading is not going to affect the throughput substantially. Is that right? Is this going to increase it when it comes in?
This is all about increasing the throughput. Everything we're doing is about increasing the throughput to 1.1 million- 1.2 million tons coming in the front end. Obviously, we want to increase the throughput, but also make sure we increase the recoveries as well. We want to make sure at least maintain or increase the recoveries. Metallurgical is a key outcome by what we do inside the plant as well as the front end of the plant.
Okay, sounds good. Thanks.
Yeah, thanks for the questions. Appreciate them.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Hamish Wiltshire with Jefferies. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi, Martin and Bryan. Thanks for taking my question. I just had a little follow-up from Adam's question just on, I guess, is there any potential, I guess, the increase in environmental bonding requirements from Great Cobar and the Peak plant expansion? Is that going to be captured inside of, I guess, the refi and corporate facility as well? I guess, do you see it in a potential timing of, I guess, cash release as part of that?
Yeah, Hamish, look, we're still working through, I mean, the Peak expansion is within the existing footprint. That's not going to drive an additional disturbance area. I guess the point I was making is just with the rehab calculator work that's going on with the regulator at the moment, we're just keeping an eye on what that will mean in terms of whether it is additional bonding that we have to put up. There's probably a few moving pieces in rehab, but I don't think it'll be materially different to what we have now, but I expect it will be a bit higher.
The Great Cobar Project is using the existing infrastructure and footprint of New Cobar, which is the open pit at New Cobar. It accesses that portal and uses the stockpile facilities there. The only additional activities that are planned for Great Cobar are really a vent shaft, which will basically obviously be part and parcel of shutting a mine down. You'd basically rehab that process anyway. A lot of the work we're doing, which is really a good place to be in, is really around repurposing or using existing footprints, give or take a few small items. What Martin's referring to is if there's a change in the New South Wales process, which is obviously being rolled out, we have to just account for whatever those changes may be, not necessarily massive changes in footprints or any other disturbance areas that we're talking about.
Yeah, and then just to follow up on the cash flows, the anniversary of the Trafigura facilities is August. We've just passed the two years. It's a four-year facility. Essentially, the cash backing steps down quarterly 1/8 over two years. We've got around $62 million drawn on that facility right now. Come November, there would be 1/8. Come February, it would be another 1/8. That's the sort of window that we're looking to close a new facility sometime mid-H2, and then all of that cash would then flow back, including the $17.5 million that's currently restricted.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Is that your question, Hamish?
Yep, yep. Sorry, it's Dan Rodden, sorry.
I just got a, how are you going? I just got a follow-up on, I guess, the cadence of care and maintenance costs between Dargues and Hera. Just a clarification as well on, I guess, the triple flag royalty liability. Is there any, I guess, residual contingent obligation there, or remeasurements or FX adjustments that you would expect over FY 2026 or 2027?
No, I think we made a note in the accounts so that the triple flag royalty, if there's no production to be delivered, then that obligation, there's no more obligation on that. I think part of the closed-out accounting, particularly for tax, was recognizing that that liability was no longer payable. Can I just get your first question again? It was on Dargues, rehab, and Hera. Was that right?
Sorry, just care and maintenance costs at Dargues and Hera over FY 2026, 2027.
Yeah, so Hera is continuing to track at around $1 million a quarter. That is the spend that we are making to preserve the plant so that we can preserve that option of turning it back on. Dargues for FY 2026 would be around $7 million- $8 million of spend. That is actually starting some of the rehabilitation works there. That is not a care and maintenance cost as such, but the start of the rehab. The focus at Dargues has been primarily at the moment on managing water on the TSF.
Yeah, so Dargues is going to be a case where there's progress happening right now on replanning areas and getting obviously things sold off-site. Sort of looking at sale of assets that we don't know the value yet till we obviously have those sale processes move through. In terms of the focus of the team there, it's really around trying to, in FY 2026, do capping of the tailings dam. Once the capping is done, that obviously allows us to start the more detailed planting and remediation work. Obviously, the rain in New South Wales has been consistently happening, especially down that region there. We're really just managing water and the spend will really move in line with that recapping process once we can do that. All efforts are to obviously remove the water and cap it. That's where the focus is right now.
That has been provided for, but it'll depend on managing the water and how we do that going forward. There's no concerns. It's just timing, that's all.
Okay. You mentioned a few kind of assets and equipment sale rounds at Dargues. I guess any more movement there or is it still progressing kind of whole tenements kind of investments or is it pretty much just in rehab commitments for yourself at the moment?
Yeah, so obviously we've got items up for sale in the market. We've had several companies looking at several parts of the plant. As you know, most companies take a while to do their capital justifications and look at the specs and see if it makes their specs work. The team's also been actively getting the land, and we have land in-house up for sale down there as well. We're going to basically get those things ready for sale where we can. We've got those motions working, and they're just going to be ongoing over FY 2026 and FY 2027. Obviously, the priority is, to be honest, getting rid of the water and capping that dam so we can actually then start the remediation works in full earnest. That's the priority. Once that's done, we'll continue to move the equipment off-site.
There's a plan, but like I said, it's not locked in concrete until we can move some of the water.
Yeah, no, sounds good. Thanks, guys. I'll hand it over. Thanks.
Thanks for your questions.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Bill with Murray. Please proceed with your question.
Yes, I was wondering if you could comment on the Federation grades for last year. Looking at the numbers in the quarterly, it seems that the actual ore processed through to metals recovered, the grades were a lot lower than the actual reserve statement grades.
Yeah, so look, in terms of the overall mine design for Federation, what's important to understand is, you know, as you start at the top of the mine and move your way down, the anticipation was the grades would obviously increase with depth. In terms of the grades that we're seeing coming out of the mine, they're pretty much in line with our plan and our budget process. Actually, in fact, we've been getting better recoveries than we had initially anticipated. As an average, when you look at the resource, it's obviously a bit deceptive, but obviously the focus is that we anticipate through our drilling process and so forth that grades will increase with depth as per the regional feasibility that we put out. Does that answer your question?
It does. FY 2026, then you would still be under the reserve grades, I assume.
Sorry, can you repeat the question?
For this year, this current calendar year, our financial year, you would be under the reserve grades for this.
Yeah, so in FY 2026, we're continuing to mine down. We're staying at the top and mining our way down. The benefit of doing that is obviously we can generate a lot. A lot of mines can, you know, push a decline right to the bottom and mine up. Obviously, we are mining down as we progress. That allows us to deliver cash flow into the business and obviously pay our way as we mine down through Federation decline as we get deeper. On average, like I said, the numbers in the regional feasibility were, if you want to call it average for the whole deposit, as we mine down and we continue drilling ahead of ourselves, we'll unlock the full potential of the resource, that's for sure.
That was always anticipated, that we'd start up higher and move our way down, generate cash, and we'll unlock grades as we move down through the ore body.
Yeah, that's fine. I just need it for my model. That's all. That's what grades you anticipate. Just another couple of questions. What's the labor situation up in that region? There's been a number of comments from companies that the labor situation is very tight. Also, how much tax loss do you have carried forward?
Tax loss one, first bill, we don't have any. We're in a tax-paying position now.
Right.
I'll take the second one. In terms of labor, yes, look, I think on the East Coast in general, speaking to a lot of my peers, the labor market is tight. Obviously, it depends on the role. Certain roles for underground mining, jumbo operators, production drill operators, and even bogger operators, it's obviously tight. We're in a situation where we're running more equipment this year with Great Cobar kicking off. We've recently revised our whole employee value proposition for our workforce. We've moved to things like a quarterly bonus, which is what the workforce was looking for, rather than an annual bonus. We're looking at other allowances to really attract and retain good quality people in both Cobar and the region.
We're also looking at other, if I might call it, pre-taxing, some of the sacrifice items that really don't cost the company money, but the individuals get the benefit from. There are a bunch of things we're looking at for employees to really show we value them and we want to grow with them. Really importantly too is the development of our people, making sure that people have a clear development plan, no matter what role they're actually in the company. One of the things we've done in FY 2025, which has been a transitional period for us, we were outsourcing blasting activities and also production drilling activities. For certain operations people, they didn't have a career path because we outsourced some of the roles that were actually in the natural career path process.
Going into FY 2026, we've now insourced those roles and now our employees can actually move through those development areas and progress as they move through the organization, which I think is very important for people to see. They've got another role they can move into that pays differently, possibly better, and they can actually develop their career as well with the company. We're making a lot of inroads in that, which we really kicked off at the back end of FY 2025, and I really think we'll see the fruits of that in FY 2026. It's not saying the market isn't tight. It is, I think, everywhere, but at the end of the day, we can only look after the people we have, and hopefully if we do the right thing by them, we'll attract and retain the right people also.
Yeah, that's great. That's all for me. Thank you.
Thanks very much for your question.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand the call back to Mr. Quinn for closing remarks.
Yeah, thanks, Kate. Thanks very much for everyone who's dialed in today. As you can see from the results for FY 2025, it really is in a good position relative to our peers. We really have a strong pipeline. We believe, obviously, and we're committed to funding that pipeline. We're also committed to really improving our operating performance to get better margins from our ore bodies and from our operations, but doing it most importantly safely and ensuring that we have good social capital and license to operate with our communities we work within. I think we're in a good position. I really value the support the investors have been giving us and sticking with us to really see this next phase out. We will do what we can to bring forward any potential opportunities in terms of delivering more cash. We'll obviously do that as we can. That makes sense.
We have a good year and a very robust year ahead of us to deliver, and we're looking forward to doing that with it. Lastly, I want to thank all our employees and contracting partners that are working with us. Obviously, without them, we aren't going to be where we are today. Lots to do, but I really think we've got a good set of people with the right values that really want to deliver with us. It's exciting for us, and I value and I'm very proud of what they've done so far. Thank you all for dialing in. Look forward to talking to you at the next quarterly update and at the AGM as well. All the best, and we'll speak to you soon.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.