Thanks, Darcy. Look, thanks for joining the Aurelia Management Team, June quarter results. I have with me today Martin Cummings, CFO, and soon to be interim CEO, Angus Wyllie, the Regional GM, for Cobar region, Andrew Graham, the Chief Development and Technical Officer, and Leigh Collins, our future interim CFO. Today's a proud moment for me personally since it will be the last quarterly update I provide for Aurelia as CEO and Managing Director. I am also proud due to the extremely positive results we are releasing today to the market. Bottom line is that, it's an exciting time to be investing in Aurelia Metals with gold metal produced above our revised high guidance, strong metals production overall, cost in line with guidance, and significantly improved operating cash flow.
Over the last few years, Aurelia has been on a deliberate strategy to grow our business in metal production and transform the portfolio, deliver operating excellence across our operations, strengthen the balance sheet through a refinance supported by a credible Life of Mine plan, generate strong operating cash flow from the operations quarter-on-quarter, fill our mills with high-quality ore resource from the Cobar region to maximize value for shareholders, which I continue to say, we have filled our mill and in FY 2026, which has been a core strategy for Aurelia and allow us to operate at full potential. We've also been creating a growth pipeline from our resource base and existing infrastructure that's been self-funded, which is what we've demonstrated over the last three years. We can actually self-fund these growth options we've actually put forward.
Importantly, we remain diligent looking over our shoulder for inorganic options that might add shareholder value. Recognizing sometimes the best shareholder values and lower risk value is actually what we have in our portfolio, but also looking for the right opportunity if it pops up externally. The focus has been to build our future into copper ore from FY 2028 while using the amazing gold resource, to fund our way and take advantage of the gold price tailwinds. It's fair to say Aurelia is well on its way to achieving this. I might just get you to review the disclaimer slide, and then we'll turn to slide three. Looking back now at the fourth quarter, I'm proud to say we've been successfully delivering on our full-year commitments, exceeding guidance for gold at over 50,000 ounces and meeting guidance on metals, as I said earlier.
We strengthened the balance sheet firstly through achieving the highest operating cash flow from the operation since 2018 at AUD 53.1 million in quarter four after all sustained capital. This helped strengthen the balance sheet, but also we were successful in delivering a robust refinance of the balance sheet. Importantly, this has released AUD 45.2 million of restricted cash back to the balance sheet, with the majority of that being paid for in FY 2026. The result was a cash balance of AUD 143.9 million, and Martin will talk more of this in his section. Notably, this year, we've also not drawn any debt to fund our growth, which is an exceptional result from the team. We've continued to ramp up Federation Mine tonnages and outperform them volume and grade with a result of the mine exceeding targets.
Federation Mine operations and geology are very exceptional and great addition to the portfolio and has been blending nicely with the ore from Peak to optimize the processing plant throughput. The combination of South Mine, New Cobar, and Federation Mine has meant that we've been able to deliver over 100,000 tonnes of ROM stock ready for the mill and also finish the year with over 40,000 of broken stock underground. This exceptional finish to the quarter sets FY 2027 up for success and supports the underlying strategy of filling the mill to maximize value. The Peak plant delivered monthly records and quarterly records on annualized basis, which is exceptional in itself through operations excellence. In addition, they've done this while achieving excellent recoveries.
From last quarter to this quarter, the Peak processing plant improved from 197,000 to 230,000 tonnes, which is an annualized rate over 900,000 before the expansions are completed. More notable, it has been achieved while we've been doing brownfield expansion around the processing plant. We've continued to successfully deliver our Cobar optimization projects and Great Cobar projects in line with schedule. We announced on the 9th of June the commissioning of the water thickener, which will assist reagent recoveries, copper recoveries, and improved tailings management. The ball mill project is progressing well also in line for commissioning in Q1 2027. The Great Cobar project has continued to develop the declines towards the raisebore shaft chamber and remains within scheduled targets and completed complex ventilation changes to set up the decline work until the fresh air raise is completed.
We released some positive and exciting results from exploration with the main resource of New Occidental reported to the market on the 16th of June 2026, which is an amazing project which will deliver 32,000 ounces of gold with a capital cost of AUD 3.3 million, subject to the feasibility study being completed and approved. This will not displace the raw ore feed, but will provide incrementally on top of the 1.1 million- 1.2 million tonnes planned. Lastly, this quarter, we released some positive news on the earning agreement with Legacy Minerals, which are leases directly adjacent to Aurelia and in particular our processing plant. Andrew will talk more of this soon.
Despite the challenging geopolitical environment and inflationary pressures externally, we've been able to manage the cost to remain in line with guidance across OpEx and CapEx. Martin will talk more to this. Safety is a core value that underpins what we do. We've actually had too many hand cuts and slips and trips this year. Although we had some improvement in this last quarter, the overall results for the year have been disappointing. I'm confident the teams and management will continue to use the tools and processes to stop this from happening. We successfully rolled out behavior-based safety in FY 2026 and refreshed our failures controls. I'm sure the team will get back on track and take more care before starting to work to prevent more injuries from occurring. We want people to go home to their families every day without injury.
It's fundamental. With the tools and with the processes we have in place, I'm sure that we'll be back on track and these injuries will be prevented. I'm going to hand over to Martin now, who will then run through the pack.
Thanks, Bryan, good morning, everyone. Turning to slide four, as Bryan has introduced, this has been a very strong finish to FY 2026 for us. Gold production was a standout. Our original guidance range of 35,000-45,000 was revised higher to 45,000-50,000 ounces in the March quarter, and we ultimately finished just above the top end at 50,400 ounces. This was driven by a prioritization of high-value gold ore at Peak, supported by strong recoveries through the plant and our increasing mine volumes from Federation. Our copper production at 2,500 tonnes was inside the bottom end of the revised guidance and was accompanied by strong results for zinc and lead production, which remained within the original guidance ranges.
Our group operating costs did finish in line with the top end of guidance, was consistent with the ramp-up in activity underway across the business. Firstly, we have deliberately invested in labor, equipment, and contractor support to debottleneck our mining, particularly at Peak, which supported a strong lift in mined tonnes and the build in ore stockpiles. Federation costs were also higher, but that is in part driven by the outstanding performance achieved this year with mined tonnes approximately 30,000 above what we planned. Secondly, labor availability continues to be a factor across our sector, we have engaged some roles with higher-cost contractors where we've been unable to source employees directly. These contractors often require associated travel, accommodation, and mobilization costs.
Thirdly, our higher production, sales, and stronger commodity prices this quarter have naturally resulted in higher royalties, concentrate transport and refining costs, and our third-party smelting and refining charges. Finally, our diesel and freight costs have also been higher, particularly at Federation, which isn't connected to the electricity grid. The June quarter also included higher freight transport and charter flight costs. While price has been an impact, pleasingly, there have been no interruptions to our supply chain for diesel, which is operating as normal. In summary, while costs did experience some headwinds from higher input costs, a significant part of the increase was driven by higher production, our focus on mining smaller but higher-grade gold stocks at Peak, our desire to maximize our ROM stocks ahead of the planned expansion, and our above-plan performance at Federation.
Our sustaining capital of AUD 58.8 million was towards the upper end of our guidance range, reflecting ongoing investments in our fleet and our processing infrastructure to de-risk operating performance. Gross capital of AUD 50 million was within the revised range of AUD 45 million-AUD 60 million. The Great Cobar Project is tracking in line with the original spend plan, there were some capital spend for the process plant upgrades that shifted to early FY 2027, particularly for the ball mill. Finally, our exploration programs continued to deliver exciting outcomes, as Bryan mentioned, which Andrew will talk to in more detail.
For FY 2027, we will continue to focus on prioritizing these high-value gold stocks in the Peak South Mine that will support strong gold production. We are in the process of finalizing our FY 2027 guidance and expect to release it with our FY 2026 financial results in late August.
Turning now to Peak on slide six, as I said, it was a very strong finish to FY 2026, with mine development higher at 1,528 m and ore mined increased to 160,000 tonnes. The key driver was that productivity work focused on resource and production drills, which resulted in sharply improved drilling rates and mining rates. This was supported by improved equipment availability and better access to developed areas resulting from investments in additional service crews. The plant performed really well with a record 230,000 tonnes processed in the quarter, up from 197,000 in the March quarter. Just as importantly, our recoveries remained strong, with gold, zinc, lead, and copper recoveries all holding at throughput increases. The real story of this quarter was the ability for us to materially increase our ore stockpiles.
The combined Peak and Federation ROM stocks increased to 104,000 tonnes at quarter end. In addition to these surface stockpiles, Peak had more than 40,000 tonnes of broken stocks underground. This is really important as we now have over one month of processing capacity sitting in front of the plant, ready to be processed as the throughput expansion projects come online, which really de-risks our ramp-up profile for the processing plant. Moving on to slide seven at Federation, it was a fantastic year for Federation with mined ore in this quarter increasing to 112,000 tonnes. You can see quarterly that the mine has been ramping up in a sustained and controlled manner, ultimately, the most pleasing outcome was that above-plan performance. Grades were significantly higher this quarter, which is driven by the mining sequence.
We'll continue to see great performance like this at times from certain areas of the mine as we mine deeper into the ore body, informed by our focus on infill drilling, which gives us confidence in our resource models. The broader trend through FY 2026 is clear. Federation is now a key ore contributor to the processing plant, with grades performing well as we mine further into the ore body. Our focus for FY 2027 is to keep lifting those mining rates, advance the decline further, establish those additional drilling platforms deeper in the mine, and lower our operating unit costs. Turning to slide nine, there has been considerable progress this quarter on the plant upgrade projects that are key to our strategy of increasing peak throughput capacity from 800,000 per annum to 1.1 million-1.2 million tonnes per annum.
The new thickener was commissioned in June and is now operational. Work continues on some of the other scope items of the process water management project that ultimately will support improved water management, enhanced metal recoveries, reduced cyanide consumption, and more effective tailings deposition. The tertiary ball mill project is progressing well with the concrete foundation poured and the steel structure currently being installed. As Bryan said, commissioning of this ball mill is expected in Q1 FY 2027. The significance of these projects is that we're building processing capacity at a time when the mines are building ore availability. The build in our ROM stockpile and the broken stocks underground at Peak are crucial to that uplift in volume once these projects are commissioned. Turning to slide 10. The Great Cobar project continues to progress in line with our schedule.
Mine development of 438 m was completed, slightly higher than the prior quarter, and takes total development to date to 1823 m. Key milestones achieved this quarter include the installation of vent doors, which now provide sufficient ventilation at the face as we progress towards the location of the fresh air raise. The raise bore tender for the fresh air raise was awarded, the shaft collar design progressed, and the recruitment of our owner's team manager to oversee the shaft works was also completed. This is the manager that oversaw the construction of the surface shafts at Federation that was successfully completed in 2024 . So we're very much looking forward to having them back with us. So with that, I'll just hand over to Andrew now to take you through the next couple of slides.
Thanks, Martin. For those following along, just turning to page 11 of your slide pack. Two things I'll touch on today, which Bryan's briefly introduced. They were both exciting releases we put out through June. The first of those, on the 16th of June, we released the New Occidental Tailings Pre-Feasibility Study, as well as declaring the maiden mineral resource and ore reserve for that project. What is it? Effectively, there's two stockpiles about three kilometers north of the Peak processing plant. They're historical dry-stacked tailing stockpiles. We've declared a resource on those of 2.6 million tonnes at 0.65 g/ tonne gold. Good gold, good quantity, just 3 km from the plant sitting on surface. The intention of the pre-feasibility study looked into bringing that down to the plant, down an internal haul road that already exists.
We'd look to put a trommel in place ahead of the plant to take the feed to screen out organics and other things. Then the intention is to feed that straight into the Dargues ball mill, so the tertiary ball mill that's being installed currently. That isn't used when we're running lead zinc because we don't need that grinding capacity, so it's sitting available and the intention will be that we put the tailings material through that ball mill and straight into the CIL circuit on the back of the Peak processing plant. It's largely using the plant and the road that already exists, which is why the capital is so low at AUD 3.3 million. As Bryan touched on, 32,000 ounces over 10 years, AUD 3.3 million spend NPV, we're saying AUD 42 million at AUD 5,000 Aussie gold.
Quite a reasonable gold price, quite conservative against spot, IRR of 258%. This hugely makes sense. The other benefit we get from this is those stockpiles would otherwise need to be capped on closure. This cleans up those stockpiles. The intention is to mine them entirely, put them through the processing plant, put them through the CIL plant, extract gold, make revenue. At the same time, we're cleaning up that site. Two things needed in order to move to production. The first is a feasibility study, which we're intending on doing through this half, so FY 2027 half one. Assuming we get board approval for the project, then we'd move to construction in half two FY 2027. At this stage, the intention is to be operational through FY 2028. Turning to page 12 of the pack.
The second important release that went out through the quarter on the 2nd of June was an expansion of our exploration tenement package in the Cobar region. That was largely through an earn-in agreement we have with Legacy Minerals. Importantly, their tenement package is contiguous with our own directly to the west and runs about 78 km down our own tenement package. We've picked up some great ground, which is right there amongst our own and importantly, right next to the Peak processing plant. There's also some interesting structure on those tenements, the Myrt Fault as well as the CSA Fault, and it's ground directly south of CSA. It's a two-stage earn-in.
The first stage over two years is to spend AUD 500,000 for 51%, and the second stage over five years from signing to spending a further AUD 1.5 million to go to 90%. The other thing in that release that we announced, and you can see it on slide 12 in the orange shading, is we picked up two vacant tenements, applied for those, and were granted those, which fit very well with the work that we're doing in the region. Going forward on the new tenements as well as some of our own, the intention is to fly Falcon airborne gravity in the coming months. We're in the process of finalizing that engagement at the moment, and that'll cover quite a piece of the legacy ground as well as some of our own ground that we didn't fly in that previous slide.
Pass back over to Martin, who's going to talk through the balance sheet
Thanks, Andrew. I'm now turning to slide 14, which shows our cash flow, and it really has been a fantastic quarter in terms of operating performance. The completion of the refi, which has resulted in cash increasing from AUD 94.7 million at the end of March to AUD 143.9 million at the end of June. As we mentioned earlier, Cobar region operating cash flow was AUD 53.1 million after sustaining capital, which is the highest quarterly operating cash flow result since 2018. The revenue result was supported by strong metal production and sales that I discussed earlier. Gross sales revenue increased to just under AUD 161 million, with 55% from precious metals and 45% from base metals. The refinance was completed in June, resulted in a release of AUD 45 million in restricted cash.
You will note in the chart there's a net movement of AUD 36 million, which relates to the timing of some cash backing that happened early in the quarter before that AUD 45.2 million was released in June. But along with our strong cash balance, I'm really thrilled that we were able to achieve in the refinance having such high-quality partners in Citi, Credeq, which are our agent for Swiss Re, and HSBC, which is testament to their confidence in our business and their desire to partner with us. We now have a larger, longer-term performance bond facility and revolving credit facility at significantly lower cost. And crucially, these facilities have no limit or cash backing requirements for the terms of each facility. Which means we get access to that balance of each facility for the term, providing us with higher flexibility as we execute our strategy.
In summary, we now have our operations generating meaningful cash and ramping up volumes, and our financing structure is now in place with a high-quality syndicate who can support our next phase of growth. That does really provide us with flexibility now to consider our forward capital management plans. Moving on to our key focus areas, for FY 2027, our priorities remain clear. We will continue to safely prioritize the highest value production and cash flow outcomes, particularly for gold, which has been central to our FY 2026 result. We will progress the Peak processing plant expansions to commissioning to lift our throughput rates, and we'll benefit from the ROM stockpiles that are in front of the plant to support that higher rate this quarter.
We will seek to maintain momentum we have in Federation in terms of mining and lowering our operating unit costs as we move deeper into the ore body. At Great Cobar, we'll focus on progress in line with our plan, with this project the primary contributor to our copper ore future. Finally, we will ensure we have a strong balance sheet while also assessing organic and inorganic growth options. In summary, as I take over from Bryan for this next period, I'll benefit from the work he has completed over the past three years to take Aurelia to a position of strength. Getting the Federation project restarted, constructed, and now in production, progressing to approval and the commencement of development at Great Cobar, and the commencement of the Peak project plan expansions that are now well underway were all achieved during his tenure.
To bring all that together was the creation of the Cobar Basin Operating Model and the development of our Management Operating System. For FY 2026, it was a strong year. We delivered gold production above revised guidance, base metals within guidance. Our cash flow was the highest quarterly result since 2018, and the balance sheet is stronger following the completion of the refinance. We are well set up for FY 2027 with a clear set of growth projects in execution. Thank you. I will hand it over to you, Bryan.
Yeah, thanks, Martin. We might move to questions. We will pass back to Darcy, and then I will summarize at the end of the questions. Thanks, Darcy.
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. Your first question comes from Adam Baker with Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Bryan and team. Thanks for the quarter. Just firstly, on operating costs are a little bit higher. You noted some of those reasons due to controllables from investments in contract labor and increasing stockpiles. Then you also seem to have a bit of higher operating costs due to the escalation in diesel costs and royalties, et cetera. Just wondering how much of this escalation in operating costs is controllable versus uncontrollable? Heading into FY 2027, is AUD 95 million the new normal or is there still work to do or scope to get this level back down again? Thank you.
Yeah. Hi, Adam. I'll take that one. Look, as I said, we'll come out with our cost guidance in August around what the operating cost looks like for FY 2027. Of the increase this quarter, we did make those concerted efforts to really build that ROM stockpile, get that contract labor in. Not all of that contract labor stays around with us. This is about building those ROM stockpiles to get us to the point where we can turn the plant expansion up. We are looking at, hopefully, a lower longer-term diesel price going forward. Probably the last bit is we did do more operating development at Federation, as I said, which reported operating costs. We'll come out with that. Not all of these costs are sticky and stay around.
Okay, that's clear. You hinted, I guess, on the prioritization of gold stopes heading into FY 2027 as well. Just wondering if you could talk us through the change here and, I guess, how does that potentially change versus the three-year outlook that you provided in June last year?
Yeah, I guess when we put the outlook out last year, we had gold production over the medium term stepping down, and that really was a function of retreating out of the South Mine, which is primarily where these smaller high-grade stopes are located. With the gold price now and the new prices that we're running through our Life of Mine plan, we see a longer life in the South Mine, which is really the main contributor to that higher gold production, which means we can stay in there longer and prioritize that higher production. That's probably the main change. What it won't change, though, is our focus on getting over to Great Cobar and getting that production online, also ramping up Federation. Certainly provides a lot of optionality now where we see a longer life in South Mine.
That's clear. Thank you. Might just sneak one more in, just on Federation that appears to be going pretty well. Referring back to the older outlook, I think the target was 320-340 for FY 2026, and you managed to deliver 360. I guess the ramp up to 600kt, how are we seeing that run rate, I guess, over the next 12-18 months?
I'll hand over to Angus in a minute, just to introduce, we are still focused on ramping Federation up. I guess, as I say, with the additional life out of the South Mine, it really lets us optimize at the process plant rather than at the mine. We have that optionality now to match the Federation mining rate to the spare capacity in the Peak plant, given there's that additional material coming out of the South Mine. Angus, I might just hand that one over to you for any other comments.
Certainly. We now have the flexibility with ore streams from the North Mine, the South Mine, and Federation. With the large stockpile on the ROMs, we are able to focus on the areas each month that provide the best value for the business. As I said, we're being focused on copper and gold, for example, last month. We'll continue that gold focus and providing the best value to the business through blending those different options. Certainly, Federation continues to ramp up next year. We continue to push that decline down as Bryan and Martin touched on.
Thanks, guys. Thanks, Bryan, for your efforts over the last few years. If you're not here for the call next month, not sure if you are or not, cheers.
Thanks very much for the questions.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Peter Kormendy with Shaw and Partners. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my question. Maybe another one on costs and Federation. Can you give us an idea for connecting to the grid, timeframe for that and the cost of that just to mitigate some of the higher diesel prices that you're seeing there?
Peter, we'll continue to run Federation on diesel power. It's not a feasible option to connect Federation to the grid.
Okay.
What we have done in this quarter, though, is awarded a contract for a longer-term power solution at Federation, which will meet our demand requirements as more equipment enters the mine, look to improve on diesel burn rates, that sort of thing, but we will remain on diesel power.
Yeah, okay. Thank you. Through the quarterly, one of the numbers that really stood out to me was the incredibly high IRR on the New Occidental Tailings Pre-Feasibility Study. Can you just talk through, as soon as I see those words, just remember from past experience, it's been a notoriously difficult project to manage just in terms of logistics and bypassing the bottlenecks and how easy do you think it's going to be to actually achieve that sort of outcome?
I'll hand that one over to Andrew. You made some comments earlier to build on.
No problem. Hey, Peter. The IRR is extremely high when you run it through a model, basically because the CapEx is extremely low. The real benefit to New Occidental is we're not doing much at the plant. We really just need to find a way to get it into the plant, which is the trommel. More than comfortable at that kind of capital number that we can achieve that, and then we use the existing plant. The other key differentiator of this project against typical, when you're talking about tailings reprocessing, is not a wet tailings dam. These are effectively dry stack tailings sitting there in two piles ready to be excavated with a digger and some trucks. The haul road already exists. We've already hauled material down that road when we did the bulk sample. That in effect has been proven.
We're pretty comfortable with this whole arrangement for the project.
All right. Thanks for answering my questions, and congratulations to you all on a really strong quarter.
Thanks, Peter.
Thanks, Peter.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Paul Kaner with Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks, Bryan, Martin, and Andrew. Just a couple of questions if I may. Firstly, just on that large stockpile that you've built up to help deliver into that step change in milling capacity. I see there's a bit of Chesney material included in that stockpile. Any sort of metallurgical concerns on processing some of this older material, or is the Peak Mill set up so this shouldn't be an issue?
G'day, Paul. I might hand that question over to Angus to respond.
Certainly, Paul, the mill's capable of handling it. At the moment, we want to reclaim that material as part of our environmental and rehabilitation requirements, it certainly has valuable ore in it. We've done a lot of site test work through the lab here on that processing parameters there. We'll aim to process that later in the year. Certainly don't have any great concerns with that material. yeah, again, it's historic tailings that we will be processing.
Too easy. Just staying on the mill, just commissioning the new ball mill. Can you maybe just talk a bit more to the timing of this? I know you said sort of 1Q FY 2027, is it late this quarter? Then, when do you think you'll be able to get up to that nameplate levels?
Thank you.
We aim to be working towards those nameplate levels. As Andrew touched on earlier, we don't need that capacity for lead zinc, and we have a very large stockpile of Federation lead zinc material on the ROM already. We'll continue to push the throughput rates with that material. The ball mill is September. We're aiming to commissioning, so the cyclone pack is a key piece of work there at the moment. The ball mill itself, installation of that onto the structure shown in the pictures will commence this week.
Yep. No dramas. That's it from me. Thanks. Thanks very much.
Thanks, Paul.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Your next question comes from Paul Hissey with MA Financial. Please go ahead.
Thanks, guys. There might not be the right person in the room to ask this question, but in a market that seems to attach a pretty significant weighting to leadership, I'd just like to drill you guys a bit, if I can, on the CEO replacement. Obviously, Martin, I appreciate you're about to exit the building, but this was announced back in January. I'm just sort of curious, has the board had a challenge trying to find a replacement, or is this taking longer than was expected? I was just curious if you could provide any sort of commentary on that process, please.
Sure. Thanks, Paul. Look, the board has been progressing search and actually is well advanced. That's been going well, and there's been definitely a good list of people who have been looked at in that role. Obviously, it just takes time to get the interviews process, the person being available for the interviews, the reference checking, and all the other details. Look, it is well advanced and it'll be coming out in the near future. It's not an overly delayed process, I wouldn't call it.
Thanks. Thanks, Bryan.
Thanks, Paul. That's it.
Thank you. We have a question from Daniel Roden with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
G'day, guys. Sorry, at the risk of repeating, just wanted to follow up on Adam's question on Peak South. I guess the stopes that you've gone back to, the high-grade stopes, I know you've known about them for a little while now, and I know your commentary that it's reflective of higher gold assumptions through your model. Just wanted to, I guess, unpack that a little bit more and I guess what you're seeing from an NSR perspective. Clearly, you're seeing more value in those stopes. Is that on a relative basis to some of the base metal stopes that were in the original three-year outlook? Is it more a reflection on, I guess, in your internal modeling, you're seeing the gold strength is more transitory, so you want to get in there and maximize that value early?
Is it genuinely just a higher NSR block that you're looking at at the moment? Just trying to unpack how you're thinking about operationally, the flexibility in the underground mining plan through FY 2027.
Thanks, Dan. Angus, do you want to start with that one?
Yeah, look, certainly, it is the underlying gold assumptions that we've passed through the model have increased the NSR of those areas. They do still have some base metals associated with those stopes, but the gold is the key driver of value in those particular areas. In a lot of cases, they are small stopes. There's more work and more labor to tonne to turn those over. With the current commodity prices, we're certainly taking advantage of the opportunity, with the high gold price, that those are clearly good margin stopes and it's worth the effort to get back into them. There is flexibility in that schedule. We're not cutting anything out. We are prioritizing in the right areas, and in sequence, so we're not taking anything out of sequence in that process.
It might be worthwhile [hauling] too, that when we did the long Life of Mine plan process back in January, February, this is when the pricing models went through the plan, and this highlighted the opportunity, which we've obviously commenced. No, it's not high-grading, it's not taking anything out of the plan for the future. It's just a, I guess, a modification to the sequence to optimize value, based on the LOM sort of findings we've done with the team. Does that answer your question?
Yeah. No, it does. I'm just trying to think of it like, probably two things, like a relativity, gold prices increased, but all base metal pricing has increased as well. I thought the NSR value of the tonnes that were in the three-year plan would have, proportionately increased attractiveness as well to just have stuck with that. I guess the question is more just if gold price has been pretty, call it whippy, over the past six months, if you continue to see that decline, how quickly could you rotate back to a base metal scoping priority?
Angus?
Yeah, certainly we have the flexibility to modify the sequence as required. I believe, even with the updated assumptions in our NSR modeling, we are still reasonably conservative, compared to the current spot price. Certainly we don't see that changing in the near term, but we do have that flexibility to revert.
Our development meters, we're pushing at Peak in the South Mine, obviously has allowed us to have working faces available and production drilling available and, breadth of stock available. The options are there for the operation if they needed to.
Yep. No, that makes sense, guys. Thank you. Apologies if I've missed the commentary, the Peak processing tonnes, if I annualize that, I get 920,000- odd tonnes of annualized throughput. That's without a lot of the expansion initiatives having been, I guess, executed and commissioned. I guess, what are the read-throughs and takeaways when you are commissioning that? It's got a 1.1 million-1.2 million tonne per annum nameplate, but the existing 800,000 tonne nameplate is being exceeded, because of ore availability. Like, is that overachieving throughput anything that is in the existing processing? Is that going to carry through to the expanded facility, so there's potential for, I guess, higher rates, depending on ore availability in that as well?
Angus, do you want to take that?
Happy to take that. Certainly there is potential for seeing that continuing. As we touched on earlier, the lead zinc is a softer ore, is able to be processed at higher rates. Then with the increase in Federation, we've had more of that ore available to push those tonnages. A lot of the expansion is for the future, for Great Cobar to become more copper-dominant going forward. It is setting ourselves up for that. Certainly there is potential upside in those numbers.
Got it. Understood. Thank you very much, guys. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Dan.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back for closing remarks.
Thanks, Darcy, and thanks very much for the questions. Today's results speak for themselves for the quarter. Record processing plant throughput this quarter on an annualized basis. Operating cash flow records since 2018. Excellent recoveries and a really strong balance sheet to set the company up into FY 2027. I want to call out again, I am super proud and excited for the Aurelia team going forward. People are living the values, and really stepping up to make the business perform at the best level. We recently did a cultural survey, and it shows clearly that there is step change improvement in engagement with our workforce, and that is going to only unlock further potential going forward. Aurelia has the resource, it has the expanding infrastructure that is bespoken well, maintained, and it really can take any of the resource we produce in the Cobar region.
It has got really great people who want to make the business successful. It is in good hands with Martin taking over as interim CEO and Leigh stepping in as the interim CFO, supported by the executive leadership team, which are very much a strong united team. While the recruitment process is underway for the new CEO, like I said, it is well advanced, and the results of that will come out in the near future. Overall, Aurelia is a very good investment, and I wish the team all the best in the future. Thanks to all the employees, the contracting partners, suppliers and the board for the support of management to get where we are today. Hopefully, you will see some great results in the future with the foundations that are put in place. Thanks everyone for joining. Thanks, Darcy, for facilitating. All the best.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.