Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. On this call, I'm gonna be referring to the presentation that was lodged on the ASX platform this morning, titled Five-Year Growth Plan. We'll just turn through the disclaimers and start the presentation. So turning to Slide 9 in the release. Look, we're really excited today to present the next chapter of growth for Bellevue as a company. This slide is broken down into three main sections: successful project delivery, the five-year growth plan to 250,000 ounces, and then degearing to fund this growth. Let's start with the success that the team and the project has achieved to date. We're really proud to have delivered the Bellevue Gold Project in under 6 years from the discovery of the Tribune lode in November 2017.
This discovery led to commencement of the underground mine, the construction of the 1 million tonne per annum process plant, and the announcement of commercial production in May of this year. Now, it's worth mentioning that all these milestones were achieved on time and within budget, in what would arguably be the toughest time in the last 20 years of Australian mining, with industry-wide delays, inflation, and under a backdrop of unprecedented global events. More recently, the June quarterly highlighted the success that we're having at the project, with our first guidance met and with generation of AUD 41 million of free cash flow from the project in Q4. These numbers speak for themselves. The Bellevue team has delivered for shareholders, and now it's time to push this project into its next chapter.
This next chapter will be marked by a substantial year-on-year lift in production from 165,000 to 185,000 ounces in FY 2025 to 250,000 ounces a year in FY 2028. And we'll significantly lower costs through increased scale, associated productivity benefits, and will drive significant increases in free cash flow. By bringing forward this growth, we'll also leverage our existing infrastructure and unlock the full value of our outstanding high-grade asset. We're able to grow from the established mining and milling rate of 1 million tonne per annum in FY 2025- 1.6 million tonne per annum in FY 2027. We'll be extracting far greater value from our mine, the underground development we already have in place, our equipment, our production plant, and our considerable operational know-how.
It's not just growth for growth sake, it's organic growth of the most desirable nature, because not only will it drive increased production, but it will generate increased financial returns and allow an exciting investment in exploration, targeting significant resource growth that can grow the deposit to over 5 million ounces. The proposed debt repayment and restructure announced today will also slash our debt to AUD 100 million. This will significantly de-risk the company and, in the process, free up cash flow to self-fund this organic growth profile. It's worth noting that the current project loan facility, taken on at a very different stage of the project life and a different risk profile to lenders, has worked very well for Bellevue to date and allowed us to build this fantastic project.
The banking team at Macquarie have been supportive since the early days of Bellevue and continue to be supportive in their approach to the proposed restructure to enable the business to self-fund the growth that's ahead of us. It's also important to note that this proactive restructure has been at Bellevue Gold's election as a part of our five-year growth plan. We've thought long and hard about our approach to the project and what will drive the highest return to shareholders. By optimizing the balance sheet now, we open the pathway to maximize future returns through all gold price environments. We can immediately commence the required infrastructure to achieve a 250,000 ounce run rate, and also expedite access to high priority drill targets that are expected to significantly grow resources and continue to provide extended mine life at elevated production rates.
Post the restructure, we'll emerge with a combination of less debt and lower gearing, along with increased production, greater asset utilization, and the ability to commence this growth plan immediately. So turning to the next slide. You know, I really went through the successful project delivery to date. We've met guidance, we've delivered free cash flow, and we've had a really strong ramp-up to the early life of Bellevue. You know, increasing gold produced quarter-over-quarter, increasing head grade to the reserve grade of the old reserve grade of 6 g/t , and increasing stope tonnes, which is the critical feed to the mill. The AUD 41 million of free cash flow during Q4, that's a real number.
All our creditors were paid up to date, and it was a real cash flow print for the quarter, and it sets up a really strong base, for the growth plan that we have going ahead. I'll just hand to Luke for a couple of slides.
Thanks, Darren. Turning to page 11. The bubble chart on the left-hand side serves to highlight the rarity and economic potential of the Bellevue Gold Project. Successful execution of the five-year growth plan will see production increased by 45% by financial year 2028, and it will propel Bellevue into a rare and enviable position. With an annual production profile of 250,000 ounces from a +5 g/t mine in a Tier 1 jurisdiction. There are only six assets, other assets in the world, that meet this criteria, and no other company outside of the multi-asset, multi-asset producers meets this criteria. Turning to slide 12. Slide 12 shows two unique graphs, it should be viewed in context of the effect of each other and the underlying effect this will have on profitability.
highlighting increased margins and financial returns from higher production, but also on the benefits from a significant decrease in cost per ounce, derived from the economy, the economies of scale that the Five-Year Growth Plan will deliver, seeing costs decrease by AUD 250 per ounce in FY 2029. Turning to slide 13. Further exploration will underpin further resource growth. The graph at the top of slide 13 highlights the rapid increase in resource growth, post-discovery to 3 million ounces, that saw over 50,000 ounces added per month through consistent exploration at the project, up until the second feasibility study that was released in financial year 2022. Post that period, over AUD 20 million was then directed to grade control drilling to successfully deliver the project.
The AUD 60 million investment that was announced today to be spent over FY 2025 and FY 2026, will be spent to further grow the project based on our 1.5-2.5 million ounce exploration target, and this can be seen on the right-hand side of this graph. Western Australian Archean lode gold deposits typically have substantial downplunge continuity and commonly host 5-10 million ounces of endowment. We can now access the downplunge extent of our ore, ore body for the first time. The 3 million ounces discovered to date are hosted in the top 800 meters from surface, and most of the main deposit areas remain open along strike and down plunge, and now can be drilled from the current underground, and we look forward to growing the resource over the next two years with this investment.
The bottom graph highlights the continued organic growth of the project from a throughput perspective to a forecasted rate of 1.6 million tons in FY 2028. We look forward to continuing to discover more ounces and further extend the mine life and add significant value to shareholders.
Thanks, Luke. So turning to the next part of the presentation, I'll go through the plan in a bit of detail and expand on some of the points. On slide 15, you can see what that five-year plan looks like on a page. You can see that the FY 2025 guidance is 165,000-180,000 ounces at a project-all-in-sustaining cost of AUD 1,750-AUD 1,850 per ounce. And there's a real focus on growth investment in the mine. You can see that growth capital high in FY 2025 and dropping off as we move into 2026 and 2027. The focus there is on expansion of the underground mine. Finalizing the key underground infrastructure, establishing Tribune, and accelerating into Viago and Deacon North, both for production and for exploration purposes.
You know, we currently have five independent mining areas, and that'll increase to 7 by FY 2026 through this investment. We'll commence our processing plant expansion, which is in a staged format. And, and as you can see, as I said, the growth capital that's on there. What this does is it increases our mining rate and our milling rate from 1 million TPA in FY 2025 to 1.6 million t by FY 2027. You know, this, this decreases the, the cost profile by $250 an ounce over this period, and opens up a lot of space for exploration, which I'll show you on the next slide. You know, what the benefits are of this, this life of mine infrastructure that we're putting in.
You know, we're not just putting in the arteries of the mine that is gonna drive the production increases, we are also going to drive the exploration platforms that are going to take us to the next level as well. So as you can see on this graph, if you look at the picture on the bottom, we have three key drill drives: the Deacon North drill platform, the Viago Decline drill platform, and the Southern drill drive. These access areas that we weren't able to drill from the surface drilling program that finished in 2021. Now, these are areas that have simply never been drilled in a high-grade Archean lode gold deposit, and all of the stuff to the right-hand side of the page goes after that down plunge component that Luke was talking about.
And includes 1.5-2.5 million ounce exploration target, in that Southern Belle area. Turning to the next slide, this gives you an overview of the different buckets of spend in the growth and expansion CapEx. And the real point here is that the investment that we do today drives that production, tomorrow in coming years. So if we didn't make that investment now, what that would do, that would delay that production increase, and that would delay the value creation through growth. So you know, significant investment in development and infrastructure early, you know, accelerating development of declines, Deacon North, Viago, and Tribune in FY 2025. Ventilation upgrades.
On top of that, investment in exploration, which is some drill drives and a lot of drilling, and the start of the process plant expansion. So AUD 12 million in to expand to 1.35 in stage one, and stage two in 2026, to expand to 1.6 million TPA . And the productivity improvements from the increase in mining fronts, they do drive lower unit costs because the additional tons leverage the existing infrastructure and leverage off the stable and fixed cost base to drive down those unit costs. Now, when you look at the mining rate and think about where it's coming from, you know, Bellevue has always had a high-grade core that we've been chasing with the mining.
You know, we've always wanted to target around 1 million TPA at 6 g/t , and this doesn't materially change under this plan. What you can see on the right-hand side here is how we're targeting the high-grade, medium-grade, and low-grade portions of the design. Now, we put out a new reserve today, which is 1.5 million ounces. That includes about 1.35 of the high-grade and the medium-grade, which we have identified purely through grade control drilling. So that reserve increase didn't come through resource increase, it just came through grade control drilling.
When you look at that plan there and all the designs that you have, leading out to FY 2029, within that plan, that entire five-year plan, there is only 10% inferred material in the entire plan, and in the first three years, it's only 5% inferred material. So this is fully designed in Deswik, scheduled out. This isn't a spreadsheet exercise to drag right. This is as robust a mine plan as you will see in the industry, and we continually target the high-grade portion. So, you know, 1 million ton, 800, this financial year, 1 million tons next year, and then 1.2 million tons of the high-grade core in 2028 and 2029. And the real driver of that, if you turn to slide 19, is the expansion out to Deacon North.
So we're gonna be spending money on a lot of the different ore bodies, but the areas that we are going to fast track is bringing Deacon North in area. You know, the Deacon North decline is essentially a spare heading, a non-priority heading for us at the moment. So if the jumbo's down to Deacon and has some spare time, they might go down to Deacon North to take the odd cut. But we're gonna put a dedicated jumbo crew down to Deacon North to expand that area and bring that forward in the mine plan this year. What you can also see on this slide in the bottom right corner is the current status of the Tribune box cut. So we mined that box cut last year when we had the open pit gear on site.
You can see that's all dressed up and ready to go, and we'll be commencing that portal, very, very soon. So what this does is it sets up the underground mining infrastructure. You know, we've got the life of mine, primary vent installation to finalize as well, life of mine pumping systems, life of mine power systems to upgrade. You know, that all gets done over this period, and that allows us to go hard at the production increase in coming years. Now, on the next slide, is an overview of the exploration platform that we have.
So, you know, by setting up these backbones, these declines, these drill drives that we're talking about, it puts us in a position that we haven't been in for, you know, at any time in the stage of Bellevue, where we actually have access to drill the major targets within the mine. So those major targets, you know, we identify them through downhole electromagnetics. It's a very high pyrrhotite ore body, particularly in the high-grade parts. The high pyrrhotite lights up in downhole EM. We have major downhole EM targets that we simply haven't been able to drill from surface. And by investing in this infrastructure early, it puts us in a position that we're able to drill this downhole EM, particularly down to the south of the ore body, which is the down plunge extent of the ore body.
There's nothing geological that says it's not gonna be there. It just simply is an access to drilling perspective. You know, at Bellevue, if you drill, you find. We just haven't been drilling that exploration in the last couple of years because the focus has been on building the mine, ramping up the mine, and doing grade control to de-risk that ramp up. We've done that successfully. Now it's time to lift our eyes and go after the exploration. Now, here's where the drill holes are going. So, you know, there's a lot of drill drive infrastructure, there's a lot of drill holes to target the exploration targets that we have, you know, all throughout the mine.
You know, particularly in the high-grade Deacon area, to fill in the gaps in Deacon, but also extend it down to the south. And then on the right-hand side of the page there, to get down towards Southern Belle and fill a 1.3-km gap between known mineralization that we can drill from that Southern Belle decline, which is a very exciting-- and that's where we have the 1.5-2.5 million ounce exploration target, which is just based on finding the same type of mineralization that we find at Bellevue. From a processing perspective, as I said, it's a staged multi-year expansion. You know, we've built this fantastic plant. It's operating really well at that 1-1.2 million TPA run rate.
Over the course of the next 12 months, we're looking at expansion to 1.35 million t. That's investment in the gravity circuits and modifications to the thickeners. And that'll get us to 1.35 for AUD 10 million. We've also got the final side of the TSF dam. This is a life of mine TSF that we're doing this year, which is AUD 7 million. And then into FY 2026, we will be doing the stage two expansion, which will take us to 1.6 million TPA , which is the extra ball mill, 3 CIL tanks. So when we built this mill, we always had one eye on expansion and one eye on the future. So there is room within the layout to install all the infrastructure.
It's just an incremental spend to what we put in already. And on a recovery front, you know, we're seeing improvement in recovery. You know, we had 90% recovery for the first half. A lot of that was due to some mechanical issues in the, in the oxygen part of the plant, which have now been repaired, and then also some erratic ore feed in that, putting high grade, in slugs through and not blending it down would create recovery issues. What we're doing now is we're blending that high grade down. We're getting more consistent feed to the plant, and we're seeing, the, the recoveries not just push up to 93%, but more towards that 95, 96% that we expect from site. Look, I'll, I'll quickly talk through the debt amendment because, that's what this is all about.
The unlocking of the debt and the unlocking of the balance sheet really allows us to immediately start spending that operational free cash flow on expanding the mine. So what we've done is we've had a really collaborative discussion with Macquarie about paying down the debt facility to circa AUD 100 million, with a back-ended principal repayment schedule in 2027. We have to go through a normal process to finalize what that looks like with Macquarie and get to final documentation. It's very typical of what we'd be doing under the original project loan facility, where we submit a life of mine plan, we review it, and we do the documentation. And we've got an agreement of how we're going to, you know, store some proceeds while we go through that process over the next few months.
But what this amendment does, you know, it de-levers the balance sheet, it eliminates interest costs and... But importantly, it unlocks the company and allows Bellevue to redeploy our operational cash flows to fund the accelerated growth plans, to fund the exploration, and bring forward value for shareholders. On slide 25, there's the overview of the equity raising with all of the details on it. I won't go through that in detail, but essentially we're raising, you know, AUD 150 million in an institutional placement at AUD 1.55. There will be a share purchase plan for the retail shareholders to raise up to AUD 25 million, which will launch soon. On slide 26, you can see the sources and uses there.
You know, we'll be putting the majority of that towards the debt reduction, and the rest of it will go to the accelerated growth capital, the accelerated exploration, working capital, and offer costs, and really allow us to pull the trigger immediately on the accelerated underground development, the exploration, and the plant expansion. On slide 27, I want to go through in depth as well, but where it'll leave us from a balance sheet perspective is circa net cash with AUD 100 million of bank debt. You know, we think it's prudent to have a little bank debt in the, you know, as a part of our capital structure. You know, it is an asset that can take debt.
So, so still having a piece of it there is the right thing to do. And as I said, what this does is it protects the company in all gold price environments and allows us to self-fund the Five-Year Growth Plan. Slide 28 is the equity raising timetable, and James to slide 29. Look, the real highlights of what we're doing is, you know, we know that we have a world-class asset at Bellevue. You know, it's gonna be, you know, 200, growing to 250,000 ounce asset, high-grade tier one jurisdiction. But we're very lucky to have it at Bellevue. You know, it's a typical asset that you'd find in a majors portfolio.
And the five-year growth plan, you know, gives us a really big opportunity to, you know, grow this asset to its full potential and realize the full potential of the asset from both a growth in production, growth in resources, growth in reserves, and growth in mine life through this exploration spend. Now, we've got a really motivated and experienced management team. It's the team that delivered the Bellevue project, and it's gonna be the same team that's in place for delivery of this five-year plan. We're de-gearing the balance sheet, unlocking this plan, and really going to be hitting the exploration hard. And I think that's probably the most exciting thing for the next couple of years is, you know, we've been very, very busy, you know, building a world-class mine.
The next thing we're gonna do is build an exploration program and hit some targets that the geos have been looking at for a couple of years. And we're very confident that we're gonna be able to grow this high-grade resource multiples above of where it is now. So thank you for that. What I might do is pass back to Ashley for some Q&A.
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 speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Brett Hacker with Canaccord. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. I've got two questions here. Firstly, just around the exploration. Could you maybe just step through the phasing of those areas around Deacon North and Southern Belle? And then I've got a follow-up.
Yeah, absolutely. So if you have a look at the slide 16, where you have a look at the targets, the first ones that we're gonna start getting some holes into is the Deacon South area, where we can start drilling the first part of it in the early part of the year, and we can start stepping out from there. Depth extensions to Deacon, and as I said, we're accelerating that Deacon North decline. That will then provide the place for the gap in Deacon, and then Southern Decline comes after that. So that Southern Decline, now we have to get 2 loops down in Tribune before we can start that, and away we go from there. So it is gonna be a stage process.
So essentially, Deacon South, depth extensions, Deacon North, Southern Belle.
Okay, and then just to follow up on the, the terms of the debt, can you just talk to that? Are there any rate changes we should be aware of or any other amendments we need to know about?
No, we're working through the finalization of everything with Macquarie, but we expect to see the sort of terms that we've got, but really just allowing us to retire the debt, and push the repayment schedule out to 2027. I think it's worth noting that we could pay the debt down anyway now, but if we ordinarily did that under the terms of the facility, it would be taken off the back end first. So what we're really doing here is just working with Macquarie to change our debt profile and pay a bit down early. We can do that anyway with no penalty.
Okay, thank you.
Your next question comes from Andrew Bowler with Macquarie. Please go ahead.
G'day, all. I jumped on a bit late, so you may have answered a couple of these, but just wondering if you could talk through the thinking behind electing to, you know, raise money, pay down debt with equity. I mean, obviously, you know, gold prices are up and about, and you're making money despite not being fully ramped up. Just wondering why you decided to go the equity route rather than going debt again. Cheers.
Yeah, Andrew, Luke here, mate. Yeah, it's a good question, and it's really interesting when you look at the project and the lens that we've taken in terms of the growth profile. We've reiterated back probably out of 25 different schedules from a mining perspective, and the focus has always been at Bellevue around free cash flow generation. So that's revenue take, cost take, CapEx to deliver the best optimized level of free cash for the project, mate. And what's really interesting, Andrew, about when you sit back and look, we've sort of touched on it on the call, but we haven't actually, from an exploration point of view, actually done any drilling from a step-out point of view in the last two years.
So what we're very focused on doing is looking at the project, and this is how we've effectively looked at it, to say, "Well, where can we rightsize or what production profile suits an asset of this quality and scale?" And fast-tracking to that 250,000 ounces per annum run rate by really FY 2028, pretty much means that when you actually look at the underground infrastructure and moving to the south, that follows the plunge of the ore body, it'll actually allow us to start exploring at depth.
So when you look at that, adding ounces out past FY 30, 31, 32 at that 250,000 ounce per annum run rate, is from a, I guess, from a dilution perspective to an earnings accretion point of view over the next five years, the best thing we can do with the project. Because as you see, when you step out and model that, and we've obviously looked at it internally, it delivers significant value, from the platform we've currently got.
Probably what I've to add to Luke's point is that, you know, if we were to add more debt to the project, you add more risk in at the time when you're looking to spend the most capital to unlock that value. And, you know, typically speaking, a single asset company like ours, you know, the debt tenor that you might get four or five years at max, putting that additional debt load in at the time we want to make the investment is probably not the most prudent thing to do. So unlocking the balance sheet and getting ahead of the curve and essentially bringing those production rates up, but spending the value now to make sure that past FY 2029, we can maintain those for duration.
I think if we get out to 2028 and 2029, and we're talking about spending significant growth capital again on exploration, that's gonna be a good thing because it means that we found what we think we're gonna find in the next three years.
No worries. Thanks. And last one from me, two parts. I mean, your reserve is based on paste fill, just an update on the paste plan and whether or not that's included in the capital outlook you provided today. And also, you know, processing going up to 1.6 million TPA. Obviously, you're adding tankage, but is there any color you can provide us on recoveries at that 1.6 million TPA rate? Are they expected to remain, you know, comfortably in the nineties, or will we see a little bit of a drop-off in residence time, despite extra tankage?
Yeah, so, let me do the second one first. Andrew, the recoveries are improving.
Slide twenty-two.
It's on, it's on slide 22 there. And the upgrade, so upgrades to the gravity circuit, the tanks and everything, we're actually expecting to see improvements in recovery through some of that. So, you know, as I said, the actual recovery... Sorry, the actual residence time within the tanks goes from 48 hours- 56 hours with the three large scale tanks that we're looking on. So it should actually have a positive effect on recovery. Look, from a pace perspective, look, pace is something that we have optionality on at Bellevue. And what we're finding as we mine the mine, I mean, we sort of deferred pace from the original studies because, look, we wanted to get into the ore body and see if it needed it first.
We want to base the decision on pace on empirical data. So we now have development that's actually deeper than the existing old workings. We're seeing no signs of seismicity, we're seeing fantastic ground conditions, and we're seeing our stopes hold up really well. I mean, the last couple of months, our stope ore recovery has been 98%, and our dilution has been 2%. So the ground's coming through really well and doing it. So look, pace is an optionality that we have within the system, but what we find as we get into the ore bodies, and when you look at those reserves and, there's a bit of-...
a bit of grade smearing and stuff that goes through it, we're actually finding that there's place to place our pillars in low-grade areas of the mine and get that higher extraction of the ore body. So look, it's something that, you know, if we wanted to pull the trigger on pace based on the seismic data or based on something coming back, it would take us 10 months to do it, but it's not currently in our base case for the operational side of things.
No worries. That's all from me. Thanks, guys.
Thanks.
Your next question comes from Levi Spry with UBS. Please go ahead.
Good day. Yes, thanks for the call. Just following up on the exploration question. So when do you—when will you really get in there and drill some of those extensions? Can you just sort of talk us through that, that movie?
Yeah. So, we've actually got, on page 17 of the announcement document, so not in the, the presentation, but we've actually got a Gantt chart there that shows where we're going into.
Right.
So right now, we're drilling the Deacon main high-grade shoots, and that's gonna bring a lot in. We then go Deacon North and Central. By Q2, we'll be in the Deacon South Offset. So that's that downhole EM target, which is the southern extension of Deacon on the other side of Consols, that we're really excited about. We've got surface programs going into Westralia, looking for stuff up there. We can drill the, you know, the parallel to Deacon potential downhole this financial year, and then really getting into, you know, more Bellevue South, the Tribune South, the Argonaut South, and then Southern Belle stuff into FY 2026. So, look, a big pipeline ahead, but, you know, we tried to lay it out pretty well in that announcement document.
Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for taking me through that. Yeah, recovery is making good progress there. Can you maybe just talk us through the mining rates, how they're ramping up, and the plans there as you open up more areas to, and then add the extra jumbos in?
Yeah, absolutely. So look, we're in five mining areas at the moment, and we're fast-tracking our way to seven over the course of the year. So the underground mining rates will increase as we go through FY25. And, you know, we expect to be at that 200,000 ounce per annum run rate by Q4 FY25, and then be able to maintain that going forward.
Cool. Thanks. Thanks for that.
I think we're already seeing some big improvements in underground development rates. So our highest underground development for the first half of the year was in the month of June, and we're on track to beat that by 25% in July, and that's just in our... That's just with the four jumbos that we have on site. You know, that's a function of work areas, that's a function of infrastructure, and, you know, we've really started this financial year strong, and that will continue. We actually have two extra jumbos coming in. So the jumbo to start Tribune, which starts this month, then in a couple of months, we'll have the, the jumbo coming into, the jumbo coming into, the De- the Deacon North decline. Sorry.
Got it.
Your next question comes from Daniel Morgan with Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hi. First question is, well, well done in getting into production. My question mostly relates to the resource, which at this stage doesn't strike me as yet justifying an expansion. I know it's highly prospective, but why sanction an expansion now? Why not pause, get the operation into steady state, comprehensively drill it out, get a new resource, and then expand?
Yes, so Dan, what I think you're probably underestimating is the amount of work that has gone into drilling out the resource in current years. Like, in that known mineralization envelope that we have, the 3.2 million ounces that we have defined, we have basically grade controlled the whole thing. And, you know, when you design these underground mines, you know, the common saying is that you might have a 2-3-year mine life that extends for, you know, 10, 20 years, is your typical gold fields, gold mine. We've actually got 5 years ahead of us, fully designed.
So that work in defining the resource, getting a quality resource update, and getting the mine plan in place to be able to do the iterations to optimize the plan, was something that we've been doing as we've been building the mine. And now that the mine in production, we have, you know, a reality and a real term of what the production rates can be built up from first principles. What the, you know, what the development rates look like going forward, what the number of work areas we have, what the number of headings we have, and, you know, what we can do from a processing perspective. We've been able to run those iterations and run those optimizations now.
So we've taken a full holistic view based on first principles from the point that we're at as a mine and as a company, standing here in July 2024. What we, what we're presenting as a part of this plan, is the plan that realizes the full potential of the ore body. You know, we're increasing production, we're increasing throughput. Now, we're taking that high-grade zone from, you know, 1 million TPA to 1.2 million TPA. Got the medium grade coming on top of that. Yes, we have to replace that in the 2030s. How we do that is put this investment in exploration at the same time. So, you know, this is why, you know, we want to pull the trigger on doing all that now, is because, you know, if you just spent two years-...
paying off your debt, and then another two years putting in some infrastructure, and then you can only do your exploration in 2029. We're not doing the best for the asset based on the data that we see in front of us. So what this plan that we're putting in place now does is actually realize that full potential of the asset. And we know it because we've drilled it. We've got this drill density across the ore body. We've got the drill targets to go and hit, and we just want to canaries back and go and do it.
And back to maybe partially Levi's question earlier, just the mining productivity, where is that at towards the 1 million TPA to just fill the mill now? Are we at a level in which we're filling the mill, on a live basis now, or is that to come?
Yeah. So, Dan, that increases as we go through 2025. So the entry rate into 2025 will be similar to the exit rate of 2024. So, you know, we're not going to be going backwards, but we'll be going flat at the start of FY 2025. But then that increases, as I said, to that 50,000 ounce run rate towards the end of the year. From a productivity perspective, underground, you know, as you can see, you would have seen in the mine before we turned on the process plant and really turned on the stoping, we were hitting our development targets every, you know, month in, month out. As we wrapped up the stoping, you know, we increased complexity to the mine. You know, we had some infrastructure ramp up stuff. We had rain events.
We were affected just like everybody else was, but we still managed to, you know, get the ore tons to the surface. We focused on stoping over that first half. The stopes are performing really well. You saw a significant increase in stope tons in Q4 of FY 2024. What you'll see, as I said before, leading into FY 2025, you know, there were times in FY 2024 due to just infrastructure being built, due to where we were, where we'd have circa 25 headings for the 4 jumbo fleet. We're now targeting, you know, 40-50 headings available for it. So you can actually start getting those productivities, getting that turning around, and away you go in FY 2025. So look, we've done the heavy lifting, we've done that ramp-up work. You know, it does take time to catch up.
There's a butterfly effect of having those things, which is why we're not at that high production rate right now, but it's certainly coming in the quarters to come.
And just thank you. Just last question. Did your hedge book contribute to the decision to raise equity, if at all? And you know, how does it work? If, obviously, it's out of the money, but do you need to post margin for losses on this book? Thank you.
No, we don't. It's a short, short answer. We'll continue to deliver into the hedge book as we've got. I think the hedge book was a function of the debt that was taken on to fund the project, and the debt's done a really fantastic job for the project to date. It was, you know, I think it was mainly funded around AUD 0.80 in the share price, and we're much higher today. So it's done a lot of heavy lifting and got us through that piece. And we continue to deliver into it as we go.
Thank you for your perspectives.
Thanks, Dan.
Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Darren Stralow for closing remarks.
Yeah, look, thanks very much, everyone, for taking the time. I know it's a busy day with a lot of releases today to go through it. Look, we're really so excited, you know, post this balance sheet restructure about the future for Bellevue as a mine and Bellevue as a company. You know, as we've said, by optimizing the balance sheet as we've done, it unlocks the immediate investment into significant infrastructure, into significant exploration, and significant growth at the asset, both in a production perspective, but also in a cash flow perspective as we reduce unit costs over the next couple of years. Thank you very much!