He will address as many of your questions as possible, and where appropriate, we'll group similar questions together. Before we get things started, I'd just like to remind you all that today's webinar is being recorded. Paul, over to you.
Thanks very much, Sam, and thank you to everyone for logging on to the webinar today. I'll take you through the quarterly results today and some of the updates from the operation as we go through. First of all, on the production, obviously disappointing that we didn't quite meet that guided production range, achieving 18,500 ounces of gold. Despite that, we're very upbeat about the position that the mine is currently in and where we see it going over the next few quarters. In terms of the way that the operation operated during the quarter, the Scotia operation has gone very well. The development has continued to increase. Unfortunately, there were some stopes there that were scheduled for the March quarter, which slipped by a couple of weeks and into the current quarter.
They have performed well, and you'll see through the presentation that the Scotia mine is now performing well. The open pit mining at Princess Royal commenced in the first week of March on the date that was planned from the outset. By the 20th of March, it was at 24-hour operations, and it's continuing to operate well. The processing plant is running smoothly at 1.2 million tonnes per annum. We've done that for a number of quarters in a row now and are comfortable that that will continue as we go forward until we move to upgrade that further. The Bullen decline has shown excellent ground conditions. As a result, we've had very rapid rehabilitation through the development there. We've done just over 2.7 km of rehabilitation. We commenced drilling on the 20th of March, which was the planned date from the underground decline.
That drilling is underway. We also have surface and underground drilling ongoing in other areas. Both the underground mines at OK and Scotia have drilling, as well as surface drilling within the Mainfield and the Polar Bear Peninsula. I think finally, in the summary, our debt has been significantly reduced over the period. It has been halved. It is currently sitting at $6.26 million , which is just under AUD 10 million. During the quarter, we completed our share consolidation and name change. I guess we undertook a rebrand of the company. We reduced the number of shares on issue to sub-400 million shares with that 1-for-17 consolidation. I think that better reflects the position that the company is now in and moving forward.
At the same time, we changed the name to Pantoro Gold and modified the logo and marketing for the company. I think that has gone well. The key point to note there is that we have maintained all of the value that we had pre-consolidation and, in fact, grown the share price from that position. I think we have completed that at the right time. In terms of safety and operation, the operation has continued to operate safely. Unfortunately, we did have one lost-time injury during the quarter. I think it really highlights how simple things can cause an injury on a mine site. The injury that we had was an operator assisting the jumbo operator with rock bolting. He simply tripped over on the ground, and his leg fell onto a rock, and it fractured a bone.
Probably the worst outcome that could have happened from a simple incident, but I think really highlights the need for everyone to remain very conscious of safety at all times as we do. In terms of the operational summary, the all-in sustaining costs are still sitting around that mid- AUD 2,000 range. It was slightly up on the previous quarter, and that is purely the result of slightly lower production. Our cost modeling is accurate. We continue to see our costs come in just under the budget that we have set. Obviously, with the lower ounces, we see that unit cost increase. EBITDA of just under AUD 50 million, obviously reflecting both the increase in gold price, but also our continued control on costs.
I think that if you compare a number of our peers with similar production profiles, I think that our cash flow per ounce has been better than many of those other companies. We continue to invest a lot in exploration. We have sort of guided AUD 10 million per quarter, and that is what we did during the last quarter. Obviously, there has been continued major project expenditure with the new open pits coming on and some other key projects around the site related to the Mainfield and other areas. In terms of the cash flow, we have added another AUD 13.4 million to our cash and gold balance. That balance sheet is continuing to strengthen, and we expect to see that ongoing.
We're in a position where we can manage our expenditure on that major growth program very effectively to ensure that we continue to see positive cash flow from the operation despite the large amount of growth work that we will continue to do. We've disclosed the gold and silver ounces sold there. I had a few questions on that, and that should answer those questions. That Nebari loan has been reduced to half of what it was at just under AUD 10 million. It's the company's intention to close that debt out during the current quarter. It is a convertible note. It will either be converted by the lender or Pantoro will prepay the remainder of that loan so that the company is debt-free in the current quarter.
In terms of Scotia, the ramp-up at Scotia, as I mentioned, has been the primary driver to the production being lower than we expected for the quarter. The primary reason for that was in the third dot point there. We completed just over 15,000 meters of long-hole drilling. The schedule was for about 22,000 meters of long-hole drilling over the period. That was primarily driven by a difficulty in fully filling all of the positions early in the year. long-hole drilling for the contractor went from effectively zero to having two drill rigs fully manned. Eight positions needed to be filled through that quarter. That took a little longer than expected with some resignations, last-minute pull-outs, and things that were well out of control of the contractor.
As I say, in the next point down there, I think they did a very good job in affecting some temporary interstate transfers and other measures to fill those positions as rapidly as possible. As a result, we're now sitting, you can see in the last point there, well and truly in the production range that's intended. That 35,000 tonnes that was up to the 26th of June, it's currently sitting at about 40,000 tonnes, which is well above the scheduled run rate for the Scotia mine in the longer term. It's performed very well in this month. I think while I'm on this page, it's worth pointing a couple of things out. First of all, you can see the stopes that were missed in driving that. This is the stopes as they sit in Scotia now.
Those things have been mined now, and we have realised those ounces. I think in terms of what's coming up at Scotia, it's important to understand that we'll go from a single area that we're mining in the south and central Scotia at the moment to three areas over the next quarter. In this upper block, we've completed significant rehabilitation of the old decline, which is shown in blue. We've now accessed the first level in a virgin ore block that sits in the area that's marked with a circle there. We are developing ore up there, and we expect to be stoping for production by the end of this quarter in that area. You can see this grey line that comes all the way down.
This drive is a link between the central and the north and the lower sections of the Scotia mine where the bulk of the mine plan is. We will be accessed, and we should be developing ore by the end of this quarter. We are going to go from one area to three truly independent areas with two declines operating over the balance of this quarter. You can see how our flexibility just continues to improve as we move on over the next year. Scotia's been a great success in terms grade control drilling and then the development that we have put into those additional drives. You can see a number of areas highlighted there. The reserve is shown by these black blocks down here to the south.
grade control drilling has confirmed a number of ore zones, which were, in most cases, recognized through the widest-based resource drilling. We did have some shapes there. They were not in the mine plan due to the lower density of data in those areas. As we have gone through and increased the data, we have had significant additions. These additions have happened on each level that we have developed to date. We expect to continue seeing some very good upside in the total gold that we recover per level compared to what that original mine plan had. That will be better reflected in resource and reserve updates when they are published towards the end of the September quarter of this year. The OK mine produced slightly lower than we have over the last couple of quarters.
That, again, was impacted by operator absences and turnover during that January and February holiday period. We saw a number of long-haul drillers exiting the site, which is directly related to that production stoping. That, in effect, resulted in 10,000 tonnes of ore less being mined over those first two months of the quarter. Again, the contractors worked rapidly there. They have temporarily put a specialist drilling subcontractor in while they are rebuilding their stocks and their fleet on the drilling side of things. You can see as of March, we are back to those expected run rates with over 20,000 tonnes mined. I think OK's in good shape. It is running at steady state.
We expect to do about 40,000 ounces for the year and maintaining that run rate as we move forward. I have used the diagram that we have here on the OK just to demonstrate, I guess, the results of the drilling. This is the first of the drilling that we've done in terms of extensional drilling rather than grade control that we've done since we completed the feasibility study in 2020. The reserve increases that you've seen every year since we started operating have come from additional ore realized in development grade control drilling as we've gone through those levels. As you can see from all of this extensional drilling that we're doing now, there's very good prospects for not only continued depth extension at the mine, but also laterally both to the east and the west.
We're seeing very strong results. The area that you see up here extended out to the east of the mine is all new development beyond where previous operators have stopped. We see some very good upside going down the whole depth extent of this mine. We will continue to test that with drilling before development, but there's really great prospects for OK to just keep growing from here. In terms of open pit mining, most of the activity through March was clearing and grubbing. The first of the stripping of the pit, we did complete the 160,000 BCMs of mining through the period with a small amount of ore. That ore is meeting expectation and continues to during June in terms of our grab sampling as it goes through.
We are currently mining at about 10,000 cubic metres per day, and that is at a steady state as we roll through and finish this pit off. We expect in this current quarter to mine roughly 1,800 ounces of the nearly 20,000 ounces that we have out of these open pits. The bulk of this ore will come from June to December, where we'll see a very steady flow of additional ore. As I said, we'll be adding in the ore of 18,000 ounces in the second two quarters of this calendar year. Rehabilitation at Bullen, and you can see it hasn't just been rehabilitation. Some of the major infrastructure is going in. We've completed drill holes from the surface. We've installed the substation. We're continuing to improve the ventilation and getting the primary ventilation set up for the mine for the longer term.
We commenced drilling from this upper area from the 20th of March. We're drilling into an area called the Esperanto Reef. That Esperanto Reef has been developed on a couple of levels historically, but that's all. There's no data around or below it. We do see a very good opportunity there for early mining. It's up in the top couple of levels of the mine that mining has been completed with no consideration below. We've done an initial program there. We're continuing to work there while we access the Crown South area. Very shortly, we'll be drilling into the Crown South and then the Crown Reef at Bullen. We continue to see a big target there, aiming for plus million ounce sort of growth in our resource ahead of mining.
Everything's well on track at Bullen. In terms of exploration, both of the next two slides are just results that we have released during the quarter. The southern end of the Mainfield, Bullen, is just to the north of the diagram here. We've been drilling into four different reef areas: the Royal Standard, the Mararoa Reef, the Northwest Structures, and Pascoe's Crosslink . We've had some good results out of all of those. That initial program is drawing to a close. We'll have a period where we pull all of those results together. We assess what we go forward with in terms of infill drilling over this year. We do expect to continue drilling in the southern area of the Mainfield over the coming year. We go to the Polar Bear Peninsula, which is in the northern end of our tenements.
We've completed a short 3,000-meter program up there. We've got some very good results, as you can see, from the plan. The next program here will include diamond drilling in both near-surface and deeper targets throughout here. Again, we see this as a real opportunity to add an additional underground mine as well as potentially some open pits to our overall production profile. All of that growth drilling continues to be focused on adding at least two additional underground mines over the next sort of 18 months to allow us to grow that production profile towards 200,000 ounces per year through increases in grade based on the ore that we're supplying with high-grade underground ore replacing low-grade open pit or low-grade stockpiles that we're currently processing.
In terms of the June quarter, you can see there that up to the 26th of April, Scotia has effectively produced what we expected to do on a monthly basis. That's continued to grow and will over the next couple of days as well. It's been a great result from Scotia. We have a lot of ore in front of us there now and expect to continue to see those sort of run rates as we move forward. As I mentioned through the presentation, we're now developing an ore in that upper area of the northern side of Scotia. That flexibility is really increasing there. The OK mine, we expect to just continue at that steady state at around 10,000 ounces, plus or minus. The processing plant is to start at that 1.2 million tonnes per annum. We do have a two-day reline planned for June.
We do not expect that to materially impact our total output for the quarter. You will see that we were slightly above the 1.2 million tonnes run rate over the previous quarter. We do not expect this shot to impact that. In terms of guidance, we have got a 23,000 ounces to 26,000 ounces for the coming quarter. I think that we have ticked all the boxes that we can to ensure that we meet that. We're expecting to achieve the lower end of that annual guidance that we gave previously at this stage. The site, I think we're up at around that 100,000 ounce run rate for March. We're on track to do that again in April as we sit right now. Obviously, it's the 28th of April.
There's a good level of confidence on that. Everything else, I think, will continue to stay as it has as we roll through. I've had a few questions on our annual guidance that will be published around the June quarter report, either in the report or beforehand. Like most companies, our budgeting process is in full swing as we speak. We'll have those finalised numbers over the next four to six weeks. In summary, the summary page hasn't changed from last quarter. I think the mine is in the great position that it has been and continuing to add that flexibility to production where we expect to be at that sort of 60,000 ounce run rate from Scotia.
We have the OK mine at 40,000 ounces, and we have about 20,000 ounces coming from open pits. We have a good run of ore in front of us and ready to be mined now. We only have very small exposure to lower gold prices through our zero-cost collars. Being only 1,000 ounces a month at AUD 4,200, even at these current prices, only reduces the price that we realize by AUD 100 to AUD 150 per ounce.
I think we are in a fantastic position there. The balance sheet, and this is the key thing that we've changed, is that it has increased by AUD 13.4 million, again, despite all of that growth work that we are continuing to do. That debt position has reduced substantially. As I've said, we expect to be closed out during the current quarter. Thank you very much for your time in listening to the presentation. I'm happy to take some questions.
Thanks, Paul. We've just got a couple of questions that have come through during the session. First one is around that four-year guidance. Given the production shortfall faced during the quarter and the required uplift in Q4, how confident are you of meeting your four-year guidance?
Obviously, we've given that guidance range there. That is our best estimate at the current time. I think we've added some conservatism to that estimate. We do hope to be in the upper portion of it, and that will see us achieving that guidance. As I said, I think we've done everything that can be done to ensure that we're in the position to do that. The contractors are all fully manned and completing the work that we expect. Mining is a difficult business. Things always pop up to trip you up. I think we're as confident as we can be.
The next one is around staffing, which you highlighted in your update. In your update, you mentioned staffing as an issue. Is this something you're seeing normalise now, or is it an ongoing issue?
Look, it's certainly an ongoing issue in different areas. We've enjoyed, over the last sort of 18 months, a much better environment than we had for the two years before that. We had really critical shortages. We saw that improve quite a bit through nickel and lithium mines closing. I guess now we're seeing a number of smaller operators opening up in the gold space. That competition for operators and engineers and other mine professionals is increasing. I think it's something that every company has to continually focus on and ensure that they're meeting the conditions that others are meeting. I think the labour market in this price environment is going to remain tight for the foreseeable future.
Thanks, Paul. Probably time for one more. This one's around the debt reduction with Nebari. Following the debt reduction with Nebari and the continued strong cash build this quarter, what are the company's priorities for cash deployment in the short term? Do you envisage paying dividends?
Look, we're very clear in terms of how we expect to tackle this. It's a question that we get quite a bit. First of all, we will ensure that that debt is finalised and that we go debt-free. Following that, we do expect to continue to build our cash position a little further than it is now. That's really to ensure that we're fully funded and have no questions about opening those additional mines that we're spending a lot of money to realise and drill now. We will increase that cash balance a little further before we look at distributions.
We then have roughly AUD 200 million in usable tax losses within the company, which means we can't pay franked dividends during that period. It's likely that if we have excess cash during that period, a share buyback is probably more likely than a dividend. Once we're in a position that we can offer franked dividends, it's certainly our goal to be providing those distributions.
Right, Paul. I think that's all we've got time for today. I'll just pass back to you for some closing comments.
Sure. No, look, thanks very much, Sam, and thank you to everyone that's listened. I think the operation is in a really great position. Ramp-ups are never easy, but the flexibility, as hopefully you've seen from this presentation, is really continuing to improve on a month-by-month basis. Hopefully, we'll see Scotia at steady state over the next quarter.
Thanks a lot, Paul.
Thanks very much, everyone.