Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the annual general meeting of Perseus Mining Limited. My name is Sean Harvey, Chairman of the company, and I have the privilege of chairing today's meeting. I welcome all shareholders and observers and declare the meeting open. Today's meeting will be a bit different from previous meetings. This is our first virtual annual general meeting, held via the Lumi platform, allowing shareholders, proxies and guests to attend the meeting online.
All attendees can watch a live webcast of the meeting and shareholders in proxies have the ability to ask questions and submit votes. Because of the virtual nature of the meeting and also to comply with the new ASX corporate governance principles, all voting will be conducted by a poll. We have the full board present today, be it in various locations across the globe. I am chairing this meeting from Toronto, Canada. We have non executive directors, John McGoyn, and David Ransom, attending from London and Melbourne respectively.
And in the first office, their Managing Director, Jeff Portermane and Non Executive Directors Dan Laufer, as well as Alyssa Brown, whose election as a new director is on the agenda today and a hearty welcome to Alyssa. Questions can be submitted at any This will open a new screen. At the bottom of that screen, there's a section for you to type your question. Once you have finished typing, please hit the arrow to send the Arrow symbol. Please indicate your question which resolution the question refers to.
We encourage you to submit your questions as early as possible so that they can be read when the relevant resolution is being dealt with. There is a slight broadcast delay and this will ensure we can keep the flow of the meeting going. Please note that your questions may be modified or if we receive similar questions Reith phrased as one question. The questions will be read by a moderator in the Perth office. As I said, voting today will be conducted by way of a poll on all items of business.
In order to provide you with enough time to vote, I will shortly open voting for all resolutions. At that time, if you're eligible to vote at this meeting, a new polling icon will appear Selecting this icon will bring up a list of the resolutions and present you with voting options. To cast your votes, simply select 1 of the options. There is no need to hit or submit or enter button as the vote is automatically recorded. You do, however, have the ability to change your vote up until the time I declare the voting closed.
I now declare the voting open on all resolutions. The polling icon will soon appear. Please submit your votes at any time. I'll give you a warning before I move to close voting. I'll now move on to today's business.
I will take notice of meeting as read. As the resolutions contain terms and conditions as set out in the explanatory memorandum, I'll only read out the resolutions as they appear in the notice without full reference to the terms and conditions in the explanatory memorandum. We have the 2000 financial statements and reports to consider and 7 resolutions before us. Once the formal business of this meeting has been concluded, Managing Director, Geoff Quarterman will say a few words and answer any questions you may have. I table for consideration the financial statements and reports by the directors and authors of the company for the period ended June 30, 2020.
I invite queries or comments on those statements and reports from shareholders. A representative from the company's auditors, PwC is attending online and he will deal with any questions relating to the audit report. Are there any questions?
There are no questions, Sean.
Thank you very much, Andrew. We can now move on to the first resolution Resolution 1, adoption of the remuneration report. The resolution reads as follows: to consider and if thought fit to pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution that the remuneration report has set out in The Director's Reports section of the 2020 annual report of the company be adopted. The remuneration report for Perseus Mining is presented on pages 34 to 49 of the annual report. For the record, I note that this resolution is non binding.
The proxy results are shown on your screen. We'll just take a little bit of time with the delay to see if there's any questions. But as I think those of you who see the the number, it's a 99% in in in favor. Andrew, you can just let me know when you feel that it's an appropriate time it's passed for questions.
Sure. There are no questions on this resolution.
Thank you. As the second resolution relates to my reelection, I will now hand over to Jeff Porterman, our MD and Kurt to chair this part of the meeting.
Thanks very much, Sean. Resolution number 2, pre election of Mr. Sean Harvey as his director. The second resolution reads his fellows. To consider, and if thought fit to pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution, then mister Sean Harvey, who retires in accordance with calls 3.6 constitution of the company and being eligible, offers himself reelection, being is hereby reelected as a director of the company.
Are there any questions?
There are no questions.
I will now hand back to Sean and Fernando and offer my congratulations on your reelections and the board.
Thank you, Jeff. Resolution number 3, re election of John Mr. John McLoyne as a Director. The 3rd resolution reads as follows: to consider and if thought fit to pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution that Mr. John McGloyd who retires in accordance with the institution of the company and being eligible offers himself for reelection, B and is hereby reelected as a director of the company.
The proxy results are shown on your
There are no questions.
Thank you. Resolution number 4, the election of Ms. Alissa Brown as director. The 4th resolution reads as follows: to consider and if thought fit to pass the falling resolution as an ordinary resolution. Then Ms.
Elizabeth Brown on a recommendation by the board, Dean is hereby elected as a director of the company Again, the proxy results are shown on your screen or all in a million favor. Are there any questions?
There are no questions.
Thank you. Resolution V, renewal of the performance rights plan. The 5th resolution reads as follows: to consider and if thought fit to pass the following as an ordinary resolution. That for the purpose of ASX listing rules 7.2, exception 9 B, Section 613 of the TSX company manual and all other purposes, the directors B and are hereby authorized to maintain the performance rates plan of the company known as the Perseus Mining Limited Performance Rights Plan, the PR plan, a summary of which is set out in the explanatory memorandum accompanying the notice of the meeting, and the grant of the performance rights and the issue of shares they're under, B, and is hereby approved as an exception to the ASX listing rule 7.1, provided that the company shall only have the ability to issue performance rates they're under until November 25, 2023, Work upon the PR plan must be re approved by shareholders. A copy of the PR plan is tabled for the purposes of this meeting.
Again, the proxy results are shown on your screen, overwhelmingly in favor. Are there any questions Andrew?
There are no questions on this resolution.
Thank you. Resolution 6 approval of the issue of performance rights to Mr. Quartermain The 6 resolution reads as follows: to consider and, if thought fit, to pass the following as an extraordinary resolution, sorry, as an ordinary resolution that for the purposes of a listing rule 10.14 and for all other purposes, the issued performance rates and the performance rate plan to Mr. Jeffrey Porter Maine on the terms set out in the explanatory memorandum accompanying the notice of meaning be and is hereby approved. The proxy results are on the screen.
And the last is the amendment of the Constitution Resolution 7. I note that this is a special resolution, which requires a 75 percent majority of votes cast in favor to pass. The 7th resolution reads as follows: to consider and if thought fit, to pass the following as a special resolution that under and for the purposes of Section 13062 of the corporations act and for all their purposes, approval is given to the company to modify the constitution by making the amendment summarized in the explanatory memorandum with effect immediately upon passing of this resolution. The proxy results are on the screen and over 99% are in favor. Any questions?
There are no questions.
Thank you very much, Andrew. So ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our discussion on the items of business. In a minute or 2 here, I will close the voting system. So please ensure that you've passed your vote on all resolutions. Will now pause for 30 seconds or so just allow people to, to, finish any voting that, that there is.
And then we'll, we'll close the voting. So if everybody could just, take a brief pause here, we'll allow people to finish voting. We'll just keep it open for about another 30 seconds. If you haven't voted, please do so now. If you wish to.
Okay. Thank you everyone. I now declare that the voting is closed. Given the time of day in Perth, the results of these wells were released to the Australian internal stocking changes in the morning. That concludes the formal part of today's business, and I declare the formal meeting closed.
I will now hand over to the Managing Director, Geoff Corning, who will say a few words. You are still able to ask questions with Jeff will deal with. I would normally have invited the attendees to join us for drinks and candies after the meeting, and I sincerely hope we should be able to do that again next year. Thank you very much, for your attendance and support of the company. I now turn it over to, Jeff Cortermane, our Managing Director.
Jeff?
Thank you very much, Sean, and good day ladies and gentlemen. During the last 12 months, each of us who have been employed in the mining industry has been presented with a set of challenges that many of us have never encountered before. For us, the per Perseus dealing with the COVID 19 pandemic and the the the significant part of the year, we've not been operating in uncharted borders. Not presenting the fact that the outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa in 2 16, had previously alerted us to the possibility of a contagion posing a material risk to our business. I am pleased to be able to report so far, Perseus has emerged from the COVID crisis relatively unscathed.
And if anything, we have emerged stronger, as we continue on our path to achieve our target of producing at least 500,000 ounces of gold per year at a cash margin of not less than US400 dollars per ounce. And in doing so, position ourselves to consistently deliver on our corporate mission of generating benefits for all of our stakeholders in fair and equitable proportions. While the global uncertainty related to COVID 19 has made it impossible times to guarantee ongoing strong performance. We've done our absolute best to deliver it. And in this regard, I think we've been reasonably successful.
Development of our 3rd gold mineyayori, which was a very big undertaking this year given the COVID challenge is now very well advanced. And we expect to pour our first gold at the moment in weeks inside of our stretch target of pouring first gold by the end of this calendar year. When fully operational, we expected Yaori expect Yaori to produce on average about 215,000 ounces of gold per year. In the 1st 5 years of operation at an all in site cost of US750 per per ounce or so. And have an 8 a mine life of 8 years or more based on the current ore reserve inventory.
It is said that that seeing is believing. So let me now show you a short video of what our outstanding construction team our contractors and their subcontractors have achieved at January, by theendofthe month. So we start the video, at the front gate of the AORE site. With the previous year's so incredibly displayed. We are, at the far west end of the exploration permit looking towards the east, In the foreground, you can see some old pits with water, which we'll be using for processing.
We fly over the, the, the waste dumps, You can see in the foreground now, the old heap leach pad, some of this material will be used for commissioning purposes. And now we can see the construction of the, processing plant in the foreground. And you can see it in the background, there's a very large lake lake Kostu, which is a the source of water for a hydroelectric dam, which is in very close proximity to our, to our mine site. Now heading out of the hill towards the, Tatics facility. This is a fully completed, structured, downstream construction.
Line with, plastic to protect the environment. There's something like 500 milliliters of water in there already, and that water will be used for, for, in the processing facility going forward. We've achieved full practical completion on that that today. Here is the fuel facility that is about 950,000 liters of fuel, which will be used by us around mining contractor. And you can see that efforts as well advanced in terms of temporary and and final facilities to house their mining operation.
You can see the beginning of mining here in the CMA fitness is the main source of ore for the mine, during the 1st 5 or 6 years of the mine. We were quite well advanced working day shift and night shift and mining and very, very good rates to date. And, excellent progress being achieved. We're now heading to the processing facility. This is the run of mine stockpile area.
And you can see the first material on the front and front of the stockpile now. Material is picked up from the stockpile by front end loader, put into the crusher, and crushed and then taken by, conveyor Seaview onto a crushed or stockpile. I can see that on that stockpile, there's about 50,000 tons of material, as we speak, all ready to be put into the into the mill to test the, the mill in due course. Sitting underneath that crushed door stockpile is a reclaimed facility, a reclaimed chamber, and, and conveyors, the the ore falls through the the, into the into the chamber, and it is then transported via conveyor to the middle, as you can see in the in the middle of that shut day. So as we go, you can see the, water dams in, on the left hand side, freshwater, the defense fund, etcetera.
You can see in the foreground, the mills, the bull mill, the side mill. You can see the cyclone sitting on top of the the the, start surface structure there. And then the CIL tag 6, 7 CIL tags will interact already to be receiving to be receiving oil in the very, very near future. You can see at the back there, the administration buildings warehouses, etcetera, on the left. And on the right, you can see the, Yealore substation.
Now the AREN 90 KB substation is is fully, commissioned and are inoperable at this point in time. We're we're heading over the top of that, and you can see a couple of, of generators, backup generators in the event that we don't have power from the grid. These generators have been used in the in the, commissioning process so far. This is the gold room. And Alyition circuit now fully complete and ready for commissioning.
This is a shot of the 90 KV, KOSU substation and the, the cables that connect that to the plant. We're heading over a river, the bag of river, which comes through from the dam. And, and this is the water attraction order's taken from here by pipeline along the corridor, the same corridor as the 90 k v electrical line runs up to the up to the planned We have various furloughs taking off at 11 KV to, outlying facilities, vacant, intercept, and load. Security, low- low security point is about a kilometer from the, from the plan, and it's, at this point, we're able to check all the visitors to the site to make sure that, any of those we've put intent come and come on board. We're now looking at the magazine.
This is, very well advanced, the the earthquakes, and we're starting civil construction. That will be finished fairly shortly as well. Probably they're seeing now is the is the parts of the camp. This is the this camp is currently, housing 637 people in, in full operations about 2:30. And as you'd expect, we provides suitable facilities to make life, a little more variable for our workers.
And you can see a beautiful can cut into the hill, quite spectacular on the lights. So That's the, the Ayori, development side of which we're we're extremely proud of. And I should say that bringing on up the 9 our our 3rd mine online has been a very important focus this year. And as you've just seen, it's kept us very busy. Meanwhile, ticking over in the background, our 2 producing mines, Edikan and Zissinghi have delivered improved operational performance During the second half of the year after a slow of first half, we produced nearly 260,000 ounces of gold at the two mines during fiscal 20, with with our all in site costs, averaging 972 US per ounce.
We're very similar to what we had done in the previous year. Costs were impacted by our COVID 19 measures in the second half of the year in the June quarter. These measures added about $20 an ounce to our production costs. However, notwithstanding this, we were able to generate very strong cash flows. And from our operations, that amounted to approximately $8,213,000,000 during the course of the year.
We've recently outlined plans to then the future of both of our operating mines, albeit in different ways. The current life of our Sissingue operation is relatively short. And we've sought to extend this by acquiring Exela Resources Limited an exploration company that owned about 2000 square kilometers of very prospective land adjacent Sissingue. Exploration success on this ground would offer us the opportunity to either truck material to Sissingue or alternatively develop, the deposit into a standalone mining operation using the infrastructure from Sissingue. Since completing acquisition in September, we've been conducting resource definition drilling at the 3 deposits located on the tenements.
Results today that are encouraging, and we expect to be able to announce an updated mineral resource in the New Year. And released the results of a feasibility study on developing the resources by the end of the first quarter in 2021. At Edikan, we identified potential for an underground mining operation, the Usawazia South deposit, which has a measured and indicated resource of more than 500,000 ounces of gold. We are gradually progressing this work, having received government approvals in the June quarter, to move ahead. The approvals allow development of the decline and establishment of ore drives on the first three sub levels of the ore body, which will allow us to better assess the deposit before proceeding to full scale development or not.
We have been out 10 to per underground mining services and are working our way through these offers. If this concept can be proven to be economically viable, this will be an exciting step for us as a company as it would be first years, Perseus' 1st underground mine development. Although, many of our people are individually very experienced underground miners. Understandably, given our lack of corporate experience as underground miners, we're moving forward cautiously with this exercise. But we look forward to bringing use of this potential opportunity in the New Year.
As our operations grow Perseus continues to work very hard and improving our capacity to effectively discharge our environmental, social, and governance responsibilities the priority being given to supporting our host communities and governments in both Ghana and Co Chabua and in the process ensure that our social license to operate in these countries remains in good standing. During the past year, Perseus' paid royalties and taxes, totaling 83,000,000 Australian dollars to the Ghanaian and Ivorian governments, while also offering support to local communities through implementation of education, health, and environmental programs. We have a strong local workforce at each of our operating sites, and we aim to provide training and employment opportunities at a range of levels for members of our host communities. To date, we have recorded 99% of our, local, employment, in Ghana. So 99% of the workforce in Ghana are are local employees, and, 90% of those in Kuwait.
Right? Are are also local employees. And across the two sites, approximately 11% of our workforce is made up of of women. We're also, carefully examining ways of minimizing our carbon footprint. And in this regard, the fact that all of the power that we will use at the Ayori at Jayori Alvin, emergency standby power will be generated from a renewable energy source, namely a hydroelectric power, represents a very significant step forward in this area.
Looking ahead to 2021, commissioning and ramp up of production at Yaoure is a major objective for the coming months. We're also looking forward to publish the feasibility study for the development of a series of deposits located on the recently acquired Excel ground resulting in extension of an extension of the life of the very successful subsidiary operation. We also expect to further optimize and synthetic hand in Sissingue with continuous improvement initiatives, aimed at increasing gold production, and reducing our on-site cost. We have several exciting exploration programs planned to roll out across the properties, most notably at K, Yore. As we look to deliver material organic growth at each of our 3 operating sites.
Despite the challenges of the past year and the uncertainty ahead of us, It's an exciting time in our company's, growth. And I look forward very much to, to, to bringing news of this in the coming year. However, before I close, I should should note that, in in recent years, Perseus has shown itself to be a company that does not risk on its sorrows. We continue to set new goals, and we continue to deliver on our promises. Our share price is starting to reflect the the results of these endeavors.
But in our view still has some way to go before it truly reflects the value of your company. And finally, I'd like to pay a special tribute to the men and women of hers is posted both in West Africa and Australia. This has been a a very tough year in a number of ways for many people around the globe. For our team, there was no exception, but the way our employees responded to the challenges that has been of the highest caliber. To illustrate the point, due to travel restrictions, many of our employees, including both local employees and expatriates, had no alternative but to work extended rosters and to endure hardship of regular isolates isolation and, in quarantining, as well as being physically and mentally draining displaced pressure on their families, many of whom were also living in challenging circumstances.
The team responded extremely well, very, very positive demonstrating understanding, and in most instances, good humor to discomfort. Their contribution to Perseus has been enormous, and I now speak on behalf of the board, and hopefully our shareholders in offering us and see a thanks for our employees outstanding service at a time of adversity. As I said, despite the challenges and the uncertainty, it's a very, very exciting time for our company And I look forward to, to talking again, with you next year and, and, talking further about the goals that we have achieved in the next 12 months. So thank you very much for your attention. That brings to close this session.
I'm happy to answer any questions. If there are any, Andrew, any other questions? In that case, thank you very much for your attendance. And I will bring today's session to a cause. Good night.