Wanting to talk about the investment proposition and position for Aurelia Metals and why it's a good investment for those who have it and who would like to get it into the future. I'll want to talk through what we're doing and where the company's going and what's been achieved. A lot of it's actually been reported through the quarterly reports recently, so you get to see it again, and hopefully it provides some comfort over the business where it's going. As a company, over the recent years, there's been a lot of investment in the company, really setting it up for the future. We're at the pivot point now where effectively, as I go through the presentation, we've moved from a heavy investment phase into value creation and cash flow, which is a great place to be.
It's not promising, it's actually delivering on the commitments we've already made. You'll see this as we go through the presentation on the hard work the management teams and the workforce has been able to deliver. Overall, we have got an amazing portfolio of commodities, got a very strong cash balance. We've got projects that have already been ramped up into production and more projects in the pipeline. We've got significant exploration prospectivity that I'll talk about as well, which give an opportunity and a pipeline for the future for the company, which is great. Where are we? As you mentioned, we're in the Cobar region. We have, on the left-hand side of the slide, the current operations, the Peak South Mine, the New Cobar Mine, and Federation Mine, which we built two years ago and have been ramping up over the last 12 months.
On the right-hand side is our pipeline of growth. That includes our pre-processing plant's been expanded. It's just had a recent release. We've expanded our tailings thickeners, and we've got a ball mill being installed to increase our capacity in quarter one, FY 2027. That really changes the landscape a lot in terms of revenue and potential cash value for this company once that is commissioned this quarter. In addition to that, we have a project we call Great Cobar Mine, where we're actually heading down to a resource, which I'll show you soon, which is an amazing copper deposit. Significant value to the company as an uplift going forward as well. We recently released a project on New Occidental into the market in June, which is an old tailing stockpile, 32,000 ounces of gold, very little capital.
It's good value and something which we can take and make some money out of, which is great. Just to recap on the performance of the company and where we are. We've met all our guidance requirements for this year, which is excellent, and we even exceeded some. Importantly, we exceeded the ones which actually do matter. Precious metals and gold. We exceeded our revised high guidance, which has obviously gone to the bottom line in cash. If you look at some of the stats over the 12 months from the start of the year to the end of the year, gold was up 51%, copper was up, zinc was up, and lead's up. Over this last 12 months, we've been ramping up our business and through our Peak and our Federation Mine while we're getting ready for our expansion to be ready.
We can generate more value through that. Great result for the team in terms of delivery for these last 12 months. Just breaking it down a bit more, I will talk about the Peak operation and the Federation operation separately. If you look at the Peak Mine, which is a mine been around since the early 90s, originally Rio Tinto. It is excellent infrastructure, and we are basically taking that infrastructure and upgrading it further.
Meters are the most important thing which drive a mine. The more meters you get in front of yourself, the more optionality you have, the more value you can generate. As you can see, the mine has been performing very well and continues to go well at pushing the meters out. What is really impressive, though, is we have hit record production tons through our mill. That is without the expansion. The expansion is still coming.
We have gone stride to stride last quarter, 197 up to 221, just from operating discipline. In addition to that, getting excellent recoveries as well. Often you see mines and companies talk about their throughput going up, but their grade goes down. In this case, throughput is up and grade has been consistently good and improving in some areas. What is more impressive is actually we have built stockpiles. We have actually built ROM stockpiles. It is de-risking the business. If there is any issues with getting more material out of the mines, you have effectively got 104,000 tons on the surface and about 45,000 tons of broken stock underground. This mill is actually now at capacity and bottlenecked, waiting for the expansion to come in quarter one, FY 2027, which is what we committed to the market.
Peak as a mine and also as the mill is actually delivering record annualized rates on the last quarterly basis. Great news story for the team. There is plant upgrades, as I talked about. The thickener, which is a tailings and processed water management, has been moving and was commissioned in this last quarter. Then we have the tertiary ball mill, which is well and truly, if you look at the picture of the thickeners at the top of the page, lovely color, blue. Down the bottom, you see the concrete slab. That is where the ball mill is going to go. Very well progressed at the start of July, and we are on track, like I said, for commissioning that in quarter one, FY 2027. The benefit of having the ROM stocks all there ready to go.
As soon as we have the mill completed, we will continue to build ROM stocks and then start pushing them through. Most mines would love this. Most companies would love it. We are mill constrained, which is great. That is where you should be constrained. Effectively, that is how you are going to make money. Federation, which is the second mine, we reported commercial production of this in July, FY 2026. As you can see, meters are going well. Ore mining has continued to go stride to stride, improving along FY 2026, and that is going to continue to ramp up in FY 2027. Grade is also a good news story. As we get deeper, the grades are increasing.
The overall resource reserve grade on average is still very much in line with our reconciliations, you can sort of see that we're not only just getting the tonnes out, we're getting good grade tonnes out as well, which is helpful for cash generation for the value of the business. In addition to the mine itself, we continue to drill down. The actual squiggly lines on the right-hand side is a decline and the ore drives off the decline, and the pink sort of colors are the ore body. We've released some information recently on the exploration program, which is now underground. That commenced underground this last financial year, and we've hit another lens called the Harley Lens. The sort of numbers you're seeing out of that are pretty impressive in any sort of mine. I won't read, there's all small print.
This was released in April this year. You're talking four meters of 16% zinc and also 8% lead. That's just one of the bits of data points I'll call out. As we continue to drill and push the decline down, we'll uncover a lot more of this ore body, potentially, to continue to grow in the mine, both at depth and on strike as well. Which is exciting for this business. The Great Cobar Project. We have the Peak South mine, we have the New Cobar mine, and we have the Federation mine now all operating. In addition to this, we have the Great Cobar Project well underway. We commenced decline development in July this year, July 2026, FY 2026, and it's well and truly on track.
It's heading towards where the shaft chamber will be, and the shaft will commence in the second quarter of FY 2027. It's on schedule, it's on budget, and it's well and truly on track to start commissioning and commencing stope production in half two of FY 2028. Once that comes on, we'll have a very good copper gold stream coming out of this mine, then effectively, the business transitions from precious and more to copper. That's a great place to be, especially with copper prices going the way they are. Obviously, a world requiring a lot more copper. There's a lot of detail, obviously, in the timelines, but the important milestones are it's on track and effectively stoping will commence as we've committed in the past.
In addition, which is a really interesting story for investors, if you look at the gray blotchy area on the map, that's actually what's in our current feasibility. It's the reserves of the deposit, and that's how we've actually laid out the mine plan with the declines going down. What's super important is beneath that area, you'll see a couple of pink dots, which is 31C, 31B, and 31. They're actually drill holes we know have very high-grade copper. Once the mine decline gets down towards the top of the ore body, it'll actually punch holes down into that area in about H2 FY 2028, FY 2027. You'll actually be able to understand the full potential of what that ore body looks like beneath the reserves. The holes show very good grade. We just need more holes down there. There's no point drilling too far away. You just burn money.
We'll get closer, then you'll actually be to drill it and unlock a lot of value for this company. It's a real game changer in terms of the potential copper deposit for this business. A notable point, it's 11 million tons of 2% gold and 0.5 grams per ton. Sorry, 2% copper and 0.5 grams per ton gold. What's notable about that is it's actually, that's before the additional resource potential is actually there. If you look at the value of that, if you think about the recent deal between Aeris and Peel, these grades are obviously good grades relative to that deal, and the tonnage is compared to that deal as well. If you put that value overlay at least on this business, and you add the fact we've got infrastructure, roads, approvals in place, a plant to use.
This is a great value proposition for investors going forward or now. Exploration potential in the region for Aurelia. There's over 135 identified projects in the region, which is exciting. We're going to continue to spend the right amount of money on unlocking the potential of the region organically. Effectively, and recently we've actually just put a new earning agreement with Legacy Minerals. Which is basically, you can't see it easily on the plan, but it's the green smudgy area on the left-hand side. It runs basically parallel to the Peak leases. What's important about that is it's right next to our processing facilities, right next to our highway, right next to everything we own. That particular work, working with an earning process with this particular company, we're very confident will add a lot of value to the tenements and the prospectivity of the region.
Exciting times to come in terms of the prospectivity of our exploration in the basin, for sure. We released in June, a small project, New Occidental Tailings Project. It's about 2.6 million tons, 0.6 grams per ton of gold. Not high grade, but it's sort of sitting there free dig. No overburden to remove, no additional sort of significant mining approvals to get, effectively, we can free dig this and potentially extract 32,000 ounces of gold. The quantity of that gold will be put into the mill. It doesn't take over any, or take possession or replace any of the raw material coming out of the mine. It's additional to the raw material. If we're operating the mine at 1.1 million-1.2 million tons, this is additional value on top of that.
At a very low capital value, AUD 3.3 million at this point in time, with a very attractive rate of return as well for the business and for investors. It's a small project. The other, I guess, attractive part of this is you're actually remediating an area of the surface, which you had to do at some stage anyway. It's paying itself back, which is a good situation to have. The balance sheet. It's an amazing story where we've ended up as a company. We actually have delivered record operating cash flows this quarter, which is a record since 2018. Eight years of performance, and this quarter was a record against that eight years. We're pretty excited by this. It comes down to a lot of hard work, really filling the mill, getting the right ore bodies into the mill, and running the place well.
What it does provide as a company, it provides us with flexibility now in how we deploy our capital going forward and capital management flexibility. It also provides us with an option of really continued self-funding our growth and our optionality. If you look at where we've come from in the last three years, we've funded all of our growth, all the investments we've made into Federation Mine, currently the Great Cobar Mine, the expansion of the mill, even the exploration work we're doing, all self-funded from our operating cash flow. It's a pretty enviable position to be in as a company when you can actually do that. In fact, the sort of numbers we're talking about in terms of performance is that we've really end up with AUD 143.9 million on the balance sheet cash and a liquidity of AUD 183.9 million. Very happy with that.
In terms of just to wrap up, on the basis of the timer. We are sort of setting the business up to be very much a company which is value creating and delivering cash flow. The significant investments we've made over the last two or three years are really going to start paying off in terms of delivering a lot of money onto the bottom line. I won't cover all these points again, but I think if you're looking for an investment where there's going to be a lot of cash and far less investment than what we've put in the last couple of years, Aurelia's a good place to put your money and look at the returns. I think, it's a bottom line. It's a great investment. It's transitioning from heavy investment to value creation now.
It's one of those investments that you really should look at closely. Okay, thank you very much.