Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Core Lithium June 2026 quarterly webcast. All participants are on a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question via the phone, you need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to ask a question via the webcast, please enter it into the Ask a Question box and click submit. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Paul Brown, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. I am also joined today with James Virgo, Chief Financial Officer, Chelsea Bates, our General Manager, Investor Relations. The June quarter marked an important milestone for us. Following FID decision and securing funding in March, our focus has certainly shifted from planning to execution. I am pleased to say that we have delivered significant progress across the business. Today, I will take you through our key achievements for the quarter and how we are tracking against our restart plan and what investors can expect over the coming months. At the conclusion of the presentation, James, Chelsea, and I will be happy to take any questions. Our June quarter highlights. Firstly, we have transitioned from planning into execution across the Finniss restart. Secondly, we have awarded all of our major mining and development contracts required for the restart.
Thirdly, we have commenced mining at Grants, started underground development at BP33, and continued progressing our plant upgrades. Finally, we have maintained a very strong funding position while successfully commissioning our logistics chain by shipping our stockpiled material leftover from when we were previously operating. Importantly, every major milestone we committed to following FID has either been delivered or remains firmly on track. I think this slide really highlights why we chose to restart the operation. We are restarting an existing operation with established infrastructure, existing permits, and a processing plant already in place. Obviously, this significantly reduces both capital intensity and our execution risk. The project is fully funded through to steady state production, has a competitive long-term operating cost profile, and provides a long life supported by BP33 and Carlton.
Importantly, Finniss also provides multiple future growth opportunities without requiring significant new infrastructure, which I will talk about later in the deck. This isn't a greenfields development. We are restarting and improving the existing operation. You will see this slide really highlights where our focus has been. Really, we are laser-focused on the restart. Just to take us back a step, back in March, we outlined a clear roadmap for the restart. Today, we are demonstrating that we have delivered the early milestones we committed to, which was funding was secured, major mining contracts were awarded, mining has commenced at Grants, and the underground development has commenced at BP33. Our focus now shifts towards plant recommissioning in the September quarter, followed by concentrate production and our first shipment of the newly produced ore during the December quarter. The business is now firmly in execution mode.
You'll see the Grants open pit. This provides initial production platform for the restart, and the pace of the progress has been significant. You'll see, in a very short time period, the team has successfully brought the open pit back to operation and positioned the asset to return to production. I think importantly, Grants' role is to generate early production and cash flows while BP33 underground development progresses. Mining commenced in the quarter, and we're continuing to expose the ore in line with the mine plan. One of the major advantages of Grants is that it leverages our existing processing infrastructure, allowing us to move into production relatively quickly while maintaining flexibility around processing and shipment timing, depending on market conditions. Overall, Grants is doing exactly what we expected it to do as part of the restart strategy. Just moving to our processing plant upgrades.
It's been another major focus during the quarter. Preparing the processing plant for recommissioning has been a key focus. The work being undertaken isn't simply about restarting the plant, it's about restarting a better plant. We're completing the targeted brownfield upgrades designed to increase our throughput, improve recovery, and enhance operational performance while leveraging the plant that has already demonstrated successful operating performance. I look forward to recommissioning the plant in the December quarter, and will note that the team up there is doing an outstanding job getting the plant knocked into shape. Moving to BP33, I think the pictures really speak for themselves. Again, I think the advantage that we do have with the infrastructure that was previously in place is quite undersold.
Hopefully you'll see the photos and the progress that we've made really draws out the previous strengths and certainly, the speed at which we've been able to remobilize. Look, BP33 remains the cornerstone of our long-term Finniss operation. During the quarter, we successfully progressed dewatering, remediation works, and portal development before commencing the underground development with Develop Global. An important milestone was the contract award to Develop. The contract obviously validates both our restart capital estimates and certainly the long-term mining cost assumptions. BP33 will become the long life, low cost production base that underpins Finniss for many years to come. We're particularly excited about the progress we've made and certainly look forward to reporting in the months to come. Just moving to talk about funding.
I think it's important just to spend a minute or two on a couple of questions that we've sort of had over the period. Look, we're in a really strong position. At the end of June, we ended up with AUD 182 million in cash, together with committed funding and additional available facilities, providing approximately AUD 320 million of available funding. This supports our restart capital requirements through to steady state production, while maintaining a healthy liquidity buffer. Importantly, these funding sources exclude any future cash flows generated from Grants production, which provides additional upside to our liquidity. I think that's an important point I really wanted to make. When you look at the funding deck that we put out post FID, you look at the sources and users. One of the things that I've spoken about many times is about we wanted to be fully funded.
Certainly in today's prices, Grants provides significant early cash flow and an even greater, stronger liquidity buffer. Funding is no longer our primary focus. Our attention is now on safely and efficiently executing the restart. Our next couple of slides will just talk about exploration growth. I think, again, we're really excited about the Blackbeard prospect. It's something that we're eager to get underway and pleased to report that we have drills spinning. There is a decent program that's planned and now underway. Just to remind everyone that this prospect, it could be quite significant. We've obviously reported an exploration target, and now we're happy to be drilling. Look forward to reporting those results in the coming months. Obviously, while our immediate priority remains executing the restart, we're also continuing to invest in the future growth opportunities.
The Blackbeard drilling program, again, has been started successfully. We have a team that's been with us for a long time that manages these programs. I think, combined with Carlton and our broader tenement package. Finniss provides multiple opportunities to expand production over time using our obviously already 100% owned infrastructure. Obviously, growth remains important, we'll continue to be disciplined and capital efficient. Look, I'll finish on here. Just like to leave with five key messages. Firstly, we've successfully transitioned from planning to execution. All major mining and development contracts are now in place. Mining and underground development are underway. The project remains fully funded through to steady state production. Finally, we continue to see significant opportunities for future resource and production growth beyond our current restart plan. The June quarter represents an important milestone for us.
As I said, three months ago, our focus was on funding and mobilization. Today, we're mining. We're developing BP33. Our plant upgrades are advancing as per our plan, we've demonstrated our logistics capability. There's obviously still plenty of work ahead, we're pleased with the progress we've made and certainly, maintain our focus on our discipline execution, certainly as we move towards our first concentrate production later this year. Thanks for that. That's the presentation. We're now happy to take any questions.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question via the phone, you'll need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. If you would like to ask a question via the webcast, please type your question into the Ask a Question box and click Submit. Your first question today comes from Hayden Bairstow from Argonaut. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Paul, Chelsea and James . Thanks for that. Just a question on the mining rate of the pit, obviously you've got to manage whenever the wet season turns up, or maybe with El Niño it won't be as bad this year. Just interested to know sort of what sort of volume you think you'll have on the ROM pad by, say, early December to get you through those couple of months of the wet season. First ore for BP 33 now looking like it's what, probably mid-year or something next year. You'll be well ahead of still processing the pit by the time you get into it. Is that the fair way to think about it?
Yeah. The intent of the NRW contract was to mine as fast as we can. You rightly pointed out, there's something we don't need to do is mine through the wet season. If you remember when we had our site visit post our May restart study, you remember there's significant ROM capacity. The intent there, obviously, we're in that sort of initial development phase. We've got about a five to one strip ratio. We're mining as fast as we can, and the intent is to mine up until the wet season. There's no point mining through because we're gonna have significant stocks on the ROM leading into the wet season. Certainly the intent will be for NRW to return and mine out the remainder including a potential goodbye cut. That's the plan. We've got plenty of stockpile space.
As I said, once you think about the next couple of months, we're through the majority of the waste, and we're only every ore. We're comfortable with the plan and certainly, the workforce has been right-sized for commissioning and for the mine material that will come out to grants. We are planning on having significant stockpiles available to us, which will obviously give us the ability to either flex up or flex down, but the intent is not to have an ore gap. As you said, BP 33, it's on track. It'll deliver first ore mid-calendar year 2027. That's obviously the plan at the moment, and we don't see any reason for that not to be executed on.
Okay. Beautiful. Just timing on drilling results out of Blackbeard?
Look, as soon as we can is a short answer. We've drilled several hundred meters of the 12,000 m- 13,000 m program. We are planning on doing all of that this side of the wet season. Look, as soon as they're available, mate, the intent is to get them out. We'll give you a bit more color in the coming weeks on what all that sort of looks like. Drilling's going well. We haven't seen any issues. Obviously, we got in there and mobilized really well. As I said, the program's already seeing some meters in the ground and some results will be in the lab shortly.
Brilliant. I'll leave it there. Thanks, man.
Thanks.
Thank you. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Andrew Harrington from Petra Capital. Please go ahead.
Good day, Paul. Well done, getting everything in line and running to your schedule. The question's around offtake and the kinds of volumes you're talking about and the parties that you might be talking about and what kind of timeline you're looking at to complete those.
Yeah. Thanks, Andrew. Nice to talk, mate. Look, I think it's an underserved advantage that we had. When you think about post-May last year, there was a deliberate strategy from us to be completely unencumbered with offtake, because as we see through cycles, there is significant advantage if you can place yourself in those positions to exploit offtake. Look, we're out to market now. We haven't really specifically given any particular timeframe, but just to let you know, we are out to market. Obviously the funding process that we went through identified several parties that were interested in providing offtake funding and various other structures. Obviously we've got good, solid existing relationships and those that were interested in the funding process are now talking to us about offtake. Look, from our perspective, obviously we're very well-funded. I wouldn't say that offtake funding is potentially off the table.
I think everything from our perspective is on the table, we're excited to be in the market, seeing what's out there. As I've said to a few people over the last several weeks, we're not needing to do anything from an offtake perspective that is unnecessary. We're well-funded. We're delivering on the key milestones. We've got great liquidity buffer. Anything we do from an offtake perspective will be value add. There's certainly plenty of interest from many jurisdictions, obviously the ones you'd expect. As I said, when we were going through the funding, there was great support across Europe and various parts of Asia. Yeah, we're excited to engage on offtake and if anything meaningful comes up, we'll certainly keep the market abreast of it.
Okay. Thank you. Remind us what's the relationship with Glencore or what's the arrangement with Glencore in terms of their participation or their commission or however it works from the perspective of Glencore?
Yeah. Look, I think one of the pleasing things with our funding consortium is the alignment we had around the skill sets and obviously we've got InfraVia, who are a sovereign wealth fund, highly credentialed, large, very supportive, diverse fund. Pleasingly, we've had really good, solid, long-term relationships with Glencore. That was supportive initially when I joined the business, and we've obviously fostered that relationship through the execution of funding. How I think about that, Andrew, is you've got one of the global leading marketers out in front doing the marketing for us. It's a marketing agreement. Obviously, there's no offtake associated with the Glencore agreement. Pleasingly, when we're out talking to groups, they're beside us and obviously have decades of offtake experience.
Yeah, obviously we're focused on executing the mine and the mine plan and getting tons on a boat and they're out marketing our product and supporting us with offtake conversations.
All right. Lastly, is Tesla in the tent or in the room discussing offtake or are they completely out?
No, look, I think as time's gone on and groups have started to think about their requirements, I wouldn't say any of those have been discounted. Yeah, we're talking to a lot of groups and we're getting positive responses. Obviously, one of the key advantages that groups see is our fast restart and obviously our competitive cost base. When you think about what we've previously done, I think we've done a really good job of reevaluating the capital requirements. We've obviously managed to fund in a really challenging environment. We're obviously seeing a far better environment now from the spodumene cost perspective, and obviously we have our ability to restart fast. We have good interest across the globe, which is really positive.
All right. Thanks, Paul. Thanks team .
Thank you. There are no further phone questions at this time. I'll now hand the conference back over to Mr. Paul Brown.
Okay. Look, that's really it for us. Thanks, everyone, for taking the time. Obviously, we'll reach out to groups in the coming days for a bit more of a conversation. Really pleasing to provide the update today. Like to thank our shareholders and of course, the broader core team, and we look forward to providing updates in the coming months. Thanks very much.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.