For the Perseus Mining Quarterly investor webinar. All attendees are in a listen only mode. There will be a presentation followed by Q And A. If you would like to ask a question, please enter it in the Q And A panel within zoom. I will now hand over to Perseus Management Director and CEO, Jeff Quartermain.
Please take it away, Jeff.
Well, thanks very much. And, welcome to this conference call to discuss Perseus' September 20 quarterly report. That was released to the market earlier this morning. I'm joined here in Paris, by Andrew Grove, our head of IR. And BD.
So, he can help me with any difficult questions towards the end of this presentation. Now, looking back over the Tim McCorder. I'm truly apparent that the world in which we live has not got a whole lot better since our last teleconference in July. And unfortunately, for some people, it's actually got a lot worse. The speaker on this call would note COVID 19 is showing a few sides of disappearing in some countries geopolitical intentions appear to be spreading and threatening trade relations and security.
And of course, the political cycle has advanced in many countries. Bringing a daily stream of bewildering statements from people who in the past, we probably would have looked to for leadership. The one bright light it seems has been the gold market. Which has been a major beneficiary of the negativity and uncertainty that I just mentioned a minute ago. We at Perseus' state claims have predicted any of but a key consideration in formulating our corporate strategy, in recent years has been to position ourselves as best we could to take advantage of a market up and even when it happened.
And I'm very pleased to say that, in the September quarter, process has been able to do just that. Not only have our 2 operations at Edikan and Sissingue performed, strongly, delivering one of our better quarters of gold production. In the process, allowing us to generate a material amount of cash. But in spite of COVID, another challenges of operating in West Africa, we've advanced the development of our 3rd mine, Yayuri, up close to the point where if this the recent, price strength continues beyond this year, and Perseus is extremely well positioned to, to, to do very, very well. So in summary, Perseus is in a good place present time.
And with our team having put in a lot of hard work over a number of years, it's, with some satisfaction that we report on the, September quarter today. Now for those of you who haven't had an opportunity just yet to read the release, let me summarize it for you, before discussing a few issues in a bit of more detail. So firstly, this quarter, our 2 mines at Acan and Sissingue continued their recent strong performance. Combined, the mines produced 68,722 ounces of gold at a production cost of US823 per ounce. A weighted average all in site cost of 9.64 per ounce.
Our average cash margin on each ounce of gold produced was US631 dollars an ounce, which exceeded our stated strategic target of $400 announced by more than 50%. And this led us to, be able to generate notional cash flow of approximately be $43,000,000 for the quarter. Production for the quarter was 6% higher than in the previous quarter. So six percent higher than June and about 19% higher than March. Our all inside costs were, about 3% higher than June.
Mainly as a result of royalties paid on the higher gold prices and also a few additional COVID related costs coming to account. Looking to the future, our guidance for the 6 months ending 31 December remains unchanged. So, as we've, as we've guided previously, We're looking for, 77,500 to 82,500 ounces from Edikan, 48,000 to 56,500 from Singi, which gives us all up 125.5 to 139,000 ounces at a, cost, all insight costs of somewhere in the range of 9 42, $1025 per ounce. Now based on the September quarter and in fact, our our performance to date so far this quarter, we're confident of not only achieving the guidance that we've given to the market, but hopefully doing very well relative to those targets. Now at the same time, implementation of our strategy for value creation by, development of mineral resources using our in house development team, discontinued as planned.
Development of Yaoure was 85% complete at the quarter end, and it's running slightly ahead of time and under budget. Our stretch target of pouring 1st gold in December, 2020 continues to be very much within our capacity. And finally, throughout the quarter, purchases managed to maintain its balance sheet strength through strong cash flows and prudent financial management. With a cash margin of $6.31 per ounce that I mentioned earlier, we generated national cash flow as a say of 43,000,000 US dollars from the operations, about 8% more than last quarter, taking this into account and allowing for the fact that During the quarter, we invested about US36 $1,000,000 in the development of Yaoure. We also funded exploration net debt balance of US2.6 million at the end of the quarter.
Now, Ajay, Rory, as I say, we we've been going pretty well there. We spent a 191,000,000 US dollars to date or 72% of the budgeted 265,000,000 development cost. So that means that we've got $74,000,000 to, to, to spend to finalize the development of the project. Now given that we've got $7,000,000 of cash and bullion on hand, the cost to complete is development is fully covered, not even accounting for our future cash flow from operation over the next 3 months, which at, current gold prices will exceed the $43,000,000 that we generated in, in September. In fact, at this stage, we estimate that when all costs are paid on the auri development, it'll be evident that the entire capital costs of the project has been funded through existing cash balances and in turn to generate a cash flow.
In other words, we expect to end the capital program in a small net cash positive position, something that I think that, a few of us would have forecast when we embarked on the development of the ARE mine back after we acquired it in 2016. So that's just September quarter in a nutshell. The the quarterly report itself does contain an enormous amount of detail on all aspects of our business. But it is reasonably self explanatory if you wish to, to look at the detail. Rather than go through all those details on this call, though, I'd like just focusing on a couple of subjects that I think will be of interest to listeners, before opening the floor to questions.
And these matters are, firstly, the progress that Yayori, Valmarin Development. And secondly, I'd also like to spend a little bit of time talking about the excellent performance at Sissingue, and the completion of the Exor acquisition and plans that we have for assessment of the Bago project. But first of all, turning to the development, of our 3rd mine, yayuri. Now at the outbreak of the covid crisis back in March, I said to our team at yayuri that in view of the pending crisis. If anyone wanted to leave, they they could be flying out immediately.
The decision was entirely up to the individual. Now, almost to a person, the response was no way we're gonna see this through to the end and and see it through they have done some of the guys were on-site for up to 4 months before getting much of a break. And as a result of their dedication and professionalism, we've managed to tick off milestone after milestone, and we're now getting very close to delivering a year ahead of schedule number. That's budget. I I I do stress that we are not there yet.
We don't want to celebrate prematurely, but the entire team has done a fabulous job to get us where we are. And I think it is important that they're contribution, be acknowledged. In the same manner, it'd be remiss of me not to also acknowledge the commitment and efforts of our contractors and subcontractors most particularly like a podium. In my opinion, this group is probably the preeminent contractor operating in Africa. They've established their reputation on many other projects, including, of course, our own Singue mine.
And, they've confirmed it once again at Yauris. So well done to, to everyone involved at this stage, So, with the quarter, as I said, we've continued to make very strong progress across all fronts, and we are on track to deliver on that stretch target we've been talking about of pouring first gold, in December. For those of you who are keen to see the progress with your own eyes. Please, take a bit of time to have a look at the video footage that is, is on our website. It was taken at the end of temper by using, one of our drones.
It, it gives a real bird's eye view of what's going on there on the ground. There's also some photographs in Appendix Day on the quarterly report, they're also telling a pretty, pretty interesting story. Now one thing I would say that in making the excellent progress been achieved. I'm very happy about the fact that we've done so in a, in a safe manner. We passed 4,000,000 man hours on the project during the quarter.
Recording only a single, LTI, which unfortunately happened in, in July. But notwithstanding that unfortunate accident, this is a very credible safety record in any fiction, and it is a real credit to the team who have been working there on the, on the testing conditions. Now, you know, speaking of COVID, since detecting a couple of cases early in the quarter at Yaoure and immediately isolating the people involved, we haven't had any further problems with COVID at all on the site. In fact, we're not even too sure that whether the cases that did occur were actually, proper infections or not as they The guys had no symptoms. And and then when they retested, they came back negative, but, as we say, better to be, better to be safe than than sorry.
In terms of the actual progress made, development work site, off-site engineering procurement, including all deliveries of 99.99 percent per fleet. So pretty much everything we need to finish building the project is on-site and probably 99% of it's been installed. I won't go through all of the details of the on-site progress chapter and verse, you can read about that in the quarterly. But it is fair to say that across right across the side, everything has gone pretty well during the September quarter. And commissioning, of electrical and mechanical pump components is now, well underway.
As I said, we were 85% complete at the end of the quarter across the site, 89% completing the plan. And since then, we've, advanced well beyond that. We are, we are commissioning, as I say, at the moment, we are using standby generators, in readiness for, CI Energy, the Bioborian energy supplier to switch on the mains power. But I'm quite sure when they're going to do that, but it should be should be imminent that we would like to think. But in any event, provided it happens, before the end of November, we should be in pretty good shape, because we can commission everything, on the side other than the, the, the mill with the power that we've got on, on today.
So, that's pretty good. Another major milestone that's been achieved since the end of the quarter is construction of the tailings dam, construction of the embankments complete and the dam is fully HDPE line. This has been a pretty commendable effort, I would say, particularly given that it's being achieved, during the current wet season. I'll speak a bit more about that in a moment. Our mining contractor, Epsis team's been operating on the site for a while and is doing very well.
All of their equipment, is either on the site or customs cleared in Amazon, waiting for the rich side. I think it's something like 70% has been mobilized to site today. The progress that they've been making in moving waste from the CMA pit and also moving materials from the decommissioned heap leach pad to the Rom is pretty impressive, and it augurs well for the possibility of a starting mining of ore and the CMA pit a little, a little earlier. Then we, than we were anticipating. In terms of other operations, Readiness activities were also well advanced, and we're expecting a seamless transition from developed to operations as the quarter progresses.
The one thing I should mention is recruitment. I know some other people have had a challenges in that area, but we've had no issues at all in in recruiting either local or expatriate people for our team. Given the location of Yaoure with within Cape Tavar, it's about 40 god 40, 50 ks from the capital city, people are very keen to join us. And in terms of expatriate employees, the prospect of joining a business that has multiple mines and can potentially offer variety in a career path has proved to be, quite attractive. COVID hasn't caused much of a problem in terms of getting people on board.
Obviously, those have to take COVID tests before they travel. And then we we have them quarantined before we let them loose on the site, but that's not been a, a major issue. Just at the moment, the Ivorian presidential election campaigns under full swing, the election takes place at the end of this month. And just simply as a precaution, we have placed some restrictions on the movement of people around on country roads and the like in Cote d'ivoire until the election's done. And so that's had the delayed the arrival of 1 or 2 guys, but that's not going to impact, the commissioning or or startup of the of the mine.
Now, financially, as I said, we, we've capitalized $205,000,000 of the AUREIX Furniture, and paid a 192% of the budget. At the end of the month. Our commitments at $223,000,000 are in place, which more or less means that the costs are pretty well locked in. So 84% of the capital budget has been locked in, materially reducing risk of overruns. And as I said earlier, if there are no further delays, our stretch target of producing that first gold in December 2020 is cheaper, and we're certainly doing all that we the contractors can do to make that occur.
The second thing I just sort of, I thought it was worth highlighting is the excellent performance of our Sissingue mine this quarter. Now when we decided to develop Sissingue back in 2016, not everyone bought in on our, on our business logic and many thought that this was not a particularly great, investment decision. Now we beg to differ. And since bringing the mine online in January 2018, Sissingue's outperformed all expectations, and it's made a major contribution to our not only in terms of gold production and cash flow, but also strategically in so far as it gave us geopolitical diversity and a different and less challenging set of technical risks. This quarter, Sissingue's reached new heights, And, it's been achieved not only with COVID lurking in the background, but also in spite of a very intense wet season.
When we've had something like 940 millimeters of rain on the site during the quarter. So, you know, that's pretty wet. And it has made some of the mining operations, slow down a little, but nevertheless, notwithstanding these challenges, During the September quarter, we produced 29,087 ounces. So that's about 42% of our total production. At a production cost of 493 US per ounce, or an all inside cost of 5.87 per ounce, gold sales were around the £28,000 mark, and the weighted average gold sale price was $15.62.
And now it's giving a margin, of US975 dollars per ounce. So the notional cash flow generated Sissingue during the quarter was around $28,000,000 or 67 percent of our, our total cash, our net cash flow. So for a 42% of the production generating 67 percent of the cash flow, you can see why do we, looking to develop the 69 At 96%, the mill run time was marginally better than in the June quarter, but it was 94%. And the weighted average blended head grade have always 2.60 grams a tonne, which was also up on the prior quarter. A big improvement seen through the quarter was the with the throughput rate where we ran at 176 ton an hour, about 15% higher than the previous quarter.
The improved throughput rate was achieved notwithstanding the fact that the blend of ore processed this quarter contained more of the harder, fresh ore that that comes from digger in the pit than it did in the past. Now, you know, while this, pressure did carry higher grade, recovery was slightly down on the prior quarter at 93%. As you might expect, but it was still several percentage points above our internal targets. So that was very, very good. The other very pleasing development during the quarter was the material improvement in the reconciliation of process door tons, grade and contained ounces relative to the mineral resource block model on which our mine plans are based.
Now in the last couple of quarters, we we saw a slight deterioration in the reconciliation. We we we made, point made of this in our last quarter. But, given our prior experience, it, it wasn't overly surprising to us based on where we were actually mining in the ore body. And we were expecting things to turn around. During the last 3 months, this has, in fact, actually happened.
And for the last 3 months, we mined 7% more tonnes at 7% higher grade than predicted by the block model. And this reverses the trend that we saw over the last couple of quarters, on a life of mine, to date based Sissingue produced about 6% more tonnes of ore at a grade that was, 96% of that predicted in the resource model. So all up about 2% more, contained ounces, than what was predicted. So what that means is that we're running bang on bang on target rather, you know, exactly as we had, had planned to do. As I said earlier on, the production costs were fairly spectacular for $93 an ounce.
20, that's 21% lower than in the prior period. Interestingly, mining costs were up 20%, it was $5 99 a tonne compared to 468, but that was a function of the fact that about 32% less tons of material were moved during the quarter as a result of that very heavy weather that I mentioned. Our processing costs were down at 15.25 a ton, largely due to the fact that we we, we processed more tons during the quarter as well. Our G and A cost ran at about a 1,000,001,000,000 an 8 per month or a touch up on June quarter. The costs did include several measures related to, combating COVID, you know, such as additional transport costs, meals, carbonation, etcetera.
And I think all up, the the costs, worked out at around $13 an ounce at Sissingue for, for the quarter in terms of dealing with COVID. The the quarterly all in so cost at 5.87 was, was about a $147 an ounce lower than the, the previous period, not be seeing the fact that we did pay higher royalty charges, as a result of higher gold prices. Sustaining CapEx was a lot lower this quarter at only $6 an ounce compared to the previous quarter. And that was more or less a result of the fact that with the weather there wasn't a lot of work going on around the tailings dam or on the FEMBSO road this quarter. So production at Sissingue was up, costs were down.
And, as I said, it was a fairly credible result given all of the distractions that were replaced in front of the team with COVID and and the, unseasonal wet weather. Now the other positive initiative related to Sissingue that occurred during the quarter was the completion of the scheme of arrangement with with Exor resources that was announced last quarter. Now this bolt on transaction, was completed towards the end of September, giving giving its ownership of around 2000 square kilometers of geologically, respective land in Northern Cote d'Ivoire, including the Bago project that's operated. That's located pretty close to our our Sissing demand. Now, prior to us, offering to acquire the company Xor announced the dual compliant mineral resource at Bago, as part of our DD on Xor, we formed a view that a proportion of the resource was economically minor.
And since, working with the company and acquiring it, we've been busy planning a, a confirmation drilling program at each of the Antoinette Veronique and Juliet, deposits. And so they're the deposits that make up the Bago project. Drilling at Veronique started on the weekend. We've got a couple of rigs operating there right now. And, work that's needed to, to be done to, prepare an environment and social impact assessment, which is a prerequisite for mining lease over the area has been underway for a couple of weeks now.
The delineation program is expected be completed by the end of the year, and the store results are required, they'll be added to the existing drill database and used for mine planning and optimization purposes. We expect to complete the definitive feasibility study for a mining operation late in March next year, so March 2021. At which time an application will be submitted for a, a mining lease. Now the important point about all this, of course, is that Sissingue currently has a mine life of about 3 years from 1st July this year. And with the acquisition of Exor's land package, including that, defined mineral resource at Bago.
We should be able to either develop the Bago project into a new gold mine potentially using assisting the infrastructure or or alternatively delineate further mineral resources at Bago that can be economically mined and trucked up to the Singghi plant for processing. Now this potentially adds materially to Sissingue's forecast mine life. And given how well the mine, the the mill and team has been operating, this would be a a very good thing for Perseus' shareholders. So in conclusion, as I said, the outset, the September quarter has been yet another very solid quarter for Perseus and as best we predicted that it would be. We expect the December quarter to be just as good, if not better.
And this should mean that the previously published, market guidance should be comfortably attained attained, in the absence of, any major change or fortunes that come from left field. The December quarter started recently well at both operate and, you know, as of the middle of this month, scheduled mill maintenance shutdowns have been completed at both, at both operations and things are moving ahead fairly strongly. As I said, yayori is, well and truly on the right path for achieving our stretch target of pouring first gold later this year. And now it's it's really a matter of head down and tail up and working like crazy to get all the necessary jobs done. Hopefully, the Ivorian elections schedule for the end of the month won't throw off any unplanned challenges, and also that COVID will continue to be a non issue on the site.
So I think there's costs as far as that's concerned. Exploration wise, I haven't spoken too much about that this quarter, but we have worked up some very interesting targets and hopefully we'll have some positive new on that front before too long. For us, we believe that at this particular time of the gold price cycle and with many companies being fully valued by the equity markets. Our, our best strategy for growth is to work hard at proving up, organic growth opportunities. And to make sure that these efforts are adequately resourced.
Now, this is a this is something that we have done. We've we've allocated, people and budgets to the work. And it's all about delivering results as it always has been, I guess. But certainly, we're very focused on, on doing that financially, we're getting stronger by the day as a result of the good production performance, reducing costs, and strong gold prices. And by the end of this year, we'll have 3 operating mines, a strong balance sheet and an ambition to continue to create very material benefits for all of our shareholders and stakeholders.
We trusted all of the listeners on today's call. We'll will come along, on the journey with us because we think it's particularly exciting. So thanks very much for your attention. Happy now to, to take any questions you may have.
Thank you Jeff. The first question comes from Nick Herbert of Credit Suisse. Can you provide some more detail around the Exhaust feasibility study scope work, what it's assessing and broadly how you're thinking about what those assets can contribute to the profile.
Well, what we're aiming to do is to prove that, that the resource is mineable and, as I say, potentially truckable or or standalone operation. I mean, the, the scope of the feasibility study is same as any other feasibility study. We're currently doing as part of this drill program, doing additional metallurgical testing, geotechnical work, etcetera, etcetera, to make sure we understand structures in the area, oxidation, etcetera, etcetera, profiles so that we can design Epic walls appropriately. We do believe that, the the the fair bit of drilling and test work has already been done, and it's been done. So a pretty pretty reasonable standard that we're we're very pleased to say.
So, you know, we're not reinventing the wheel necessarily here. And we're we're fairly confident we can get that completed by, by, by, the end of March now as to how much kind of add, I I'm not really willing to to go into that just yet, mainly because we haven't done the the confirmation drilling program this stage. I mean, I think exhaust resource announced resource was around, 500,000 ounces, but a lot of that was inferred. And, so, you know, we wouldn't be, we wouldn't be wanting to make any public statements around how much of that is mineable until we've done the, done the work to be able to prove the concept. So I'm sorry, I can't really speculate or I'm not willing to speculate rather on that.
But, suffice to say that, we wouldn't be doing this if we didn't think, we could make a material addition to the, to the Sissingue operation.
Thank you. And, Nick had a second question around Edikan. Can you talk through in more detail, the recent Edikan recovery challenge plans to address that and the expectations around timing for improvement in that recovery rate?
Yeah. Well, we've been working very hard since March to to work on that, and I I was just looking at the data for, Rob Taber this morning, and we, we're we're running right on target in terms of our, of our, of our recovery. So what the issue was early in the year as we, as we've said to Picker, was that we were putting in an excess of McKinsey ore, which was affecting the recoveries in the both the flotation and CIL circuits. Now what we did in the June quarter was we wound back on that on that, component quite considerably. And, that, that gave us an immediate, immediate improvement in the, in the situation.
What we what we've found during the course of the, June quarter and also into into, into the September quarter in the early part So that was having round back the kids here, we were getting a good outcome, but we were also supplementing feed from the crushed store stockpile. And some of the material on that stockpile was transitional in nature. So you can't you can't always see just visually whether the material is fresh transitional, I mean, rock oxide is pretty apparent, but we were we were getting material coming into the, into the, into the circuit that was, once again, causing some disruption to it. So what we've done is we've switched switched our our our, lean feed and we're taking a lot of the, stockpiled ore as it were, from the from the Slager North Stockpile, which is very much a known quantity. So progressively, we've been, improving the recoveries as the quarters got on.
And we're getting good stability in the circuit and, we're very pleased with the way it's trending at the at the present time. And, you know, with the the production for the quarter was was pretty reasonable and, we we see no reason why it won't continue on the positive trend that is showing at the moment.
Thank you. And the next question comes from Reg Spencer of Canaccord. Assuming you just find me when when you expect, excuse my pronunciation, SUI just south underground.
When do we expect it to come online? Now to be very precise about that, it's gonna depend on when we actually start, start mining operations. We were scheduled to start, that mining operation in the December quarter. However, as I think we mentioned in the in the quarterly report, we we've slowed that down a little because we want to be absolutely clear as to what the, what the cost structure of that development is going to be. Some of the there've been some changes to the labor, arrangements in Ghana, since we did the feasibility study and and, you know, we need to be absolutely confident that, that the, the composition of the workforce as proposed by mining contractors is going to actually be allowed to, operate in the country and, and that the productivity rates that they're claiming, that they can achieve will, in fact, be achieved.
The reason for that that, of course, if you don't achieve the productivity rates that they're setting out, then the mining operation takes a lot longer, which means you're carrying overhead for a lot longer, etcetera, etcetera. So We're busily working through those things at the moment. We have been doing confirmation drilling on the resource. So that drilling should be pretty much finished about now. I think is, around the middle of this month.
And by the end of this year, we will have done an updated resource model and our level of confidence in the resource will be substantially higher than what it was when we did the feasibility study. So we'll be, we'll be working pretty hard during the balance of this quarter to make sure that we, we understand absolutely what, what, you know, the the project offices, and then we'll we'll move into development pretty well straight away from there. And I think if we get go, if we were to get going in the first quarter of next year, I think it'll be about about a year, I think, Andrea, before we start getting contribution into the, a real contribution into the, into the mill feed. But, you know, assess the point. We don't want to, we don't want to go into that underground development with a 12¢ of, of, of, achievement.
This is our 1st underground operation where everything else has been open cut today. And we wanna make sure that, that we know what we're doing when we embark on this exercise because we do have very definite, plans develop an underground mine at Yayuri, down the down the track. And I think if we, if we mess this one up, that won't, give us a whole deal of confidence as far as concerned. So we are being a little bit conservative and people might not appreciate that, but I'm sure you will if, if we, if we develop as far as the south and make a lot of money out of it rather than the alternative.
Thank you, Jeff. There are no further questions at this time. So I will now pass back to you for any closing remarks.
Okay. Well, thanks very much. Well, look, as I said, right at the out of this presentation. I mean, I see this is in a very strong position. We've deliberately positioned ourselves to be producing and selling gold in rising market like this, and, we are doing quite well.
And we see no reason why, why the December quarter won't be as good if not better than the than the September quarter just passed. And, with the, with the, excellent progress that we're making at Yaurie, we're looking forward very much to being a 3 main operation by the end of this year. So the next time we have a, a quarterly call, which will be in January, I expect, Perseus will be a different company to what it is today, and, and we will be well and truly on the way to establishing ourselves as a credible mid tier producer. So thanks very much for your time today. We do appreciate that, and we look forward to bringing you further positive news on subsequent, calls.
The day.