Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Perseus Mining June 2018 Quarterly Conference Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Jeff Quartermaine, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much, and welcome to this conference call. I'm joined here in Perth by Lisa Brown, our CFO, who will assist me with any specific questions that you might have later in the call. Now, for those of you who have had an opportunity to read the report that we've released to the market earlier today, and of course for the benefit of those who haven't yet had the opportunity to go through it, it's fairly apparent that the results that Perseus has achieved in the June quarter, and indeed the June half-year and 2018 financial year, are the best that we've ever achieved, and certainly validate the company's corporate strategy of transitioning from being a single mine operator basically to a successful multi-mine, multi-jurisdictional gold explorer, developer, and producer. Now, as pleasing as the results are, we don't regard them as any cause for special celebration.
The way we review these results is that they simply reflect the results of our executing our plan to progressively improve the quality of our asset portfolio and improve the consistency of our performances, such that we as a company can be relied on by our shareholders to deliver attractive outcomes. Now, with some pride, however, I do note that this is the sixth consecutive quarter where we have delivered a sound quarterly performance, so that measure, the consistency that we're seeking, is starting to materialize. I should also note that in terms of improving the quality of our asset portfolio, our cause has been advanced this quarter by the performance of our second mine, Sissingué, where our team was able to record a very low operating all-in site cost of $520 an ounce, and at the same time exceed our production targets, but more of that later on.
In the end, it's also that it's a bit this quarter towards improving asset quality as well, with incremental improvement, recording the second best ever production result since commercial production started in 2012, and doing this at a reduced all-in site cost. So bit by bit, we're steadily upgrading the quality of our assets. Now, with an eye to the future, what we've achieved this quarter in terms of our cash build is also very important, particularly in the context of continuing to improve the asset portfolio and driving us towards our goal of producing approximately 500,000 ounces of gold annually from three mines by 2022. With the cash balances that we're building, the funding task for the development of our third mine, Yaouré, without the force of the equity market, is becoming very realistic and doable proposition based on current market conditions.
I'm sure our existing shareholders will be very pleased to hear this, although those potential investors sitting on the sidelines waiting for an opportunity to purchase discounted stock may not share that enthusiasm so much. Anyway, let's turn to the quarterly and talk about that. Looking at the Perseus Group as a whole, across both of our operations, we produced a combined total of 83,881 ounces of gold for the quarter, 57,861 of those ounces coming from Edikan, and 26,20 ounces coming from, so it's 26,020 ounces coming from Sissingué. Now, that's 31% more than the amount produced by the group in the previous quarter, and 63% more than in the corresponding period in 2017. Very marked increases in our production. For the half-year, we produced 147,908 ounces, and for the full year, that translated to 255,916 ounces.
Now, both of these amounts represented new production records for us, and both were comfortably within the previously announced production guidance ranges of 140,000-160,000 ounces in the case of the half-year, and 250,000-285,000 ounces in the case of the full year. Now, both of these results were materially greater than in prior corresponding periods, so 37% greater than the December half, and 45% greater than the prior financial year. Now, in terms of costs, the quarterly production at Edikan was $9.70 per ounce, that's U.S. dollars, and the all-in site cost was $10.90 per ounce, both better than the prior quarter and the corresponding period in 2017. Not to be outdone, as I mentioned earlier, the production at Sissingué, the production cost at Sissingué, was $462 an ounce, U.S. dollars an ounce, with an all-in site cost of $520 per ounce.
Now, when combined, this resulted in a weighted average all-inside cost for the group of $913 per ounce, which is 17% lower than the group reported all-inside cost last quarter. So we've seen improvement both in terms of production and in terms of cost. Now, looking forward, our production guidance for the December quarter, the December half-year, I should say, has been set at 130,000-150,000 ounces at an all-inside cost of $9.50-$11.50 per ounce. Now, based on actual operating performance at both Edikan and Sissingué subsequent to the end of the quarter, so the first 10 days at least of the quarter, this production and cost guidance may prove to be slightly conservative. However, we are in the process of transitioning to harder ores. We haven't yet got to that.
We're processing oxide ore at the moment, and therefore recoveries and throughput rates for these ores are yet to be confirmed. And certain assumptions that we've made regarding the potential impact of weather on our operating performance also remain to be validated. By the end of the September quarter, we should be through the worst African rainy season, and we'll also have started to mine transitional and fresh material at Sissingué, so we should be in a better position at that stage to make an assessment as to what we will deliver for the half-year, and if necessary, we'll be in a position then to modify our guidance. But returning to this current quarter, we sold 82,251 ounces of gold during the quarter, and we achieved an average price of $1,312 per ounce. That's across the both mines, and we've generated material amounts of cash at both of our mines.
In fact, based on this average gold price and our average all-in site cost, the average margin that we generated was $399 per ounce. So when you multiply that out with the number of ounces sold, we've generated a notional free cash flow from our operations of about $33 million. Now, obviously, not all of this cash goes directly to the bank balance. We have to service debt, pay corporate costs, and also we choose to explore. We also have movements in debtors and creditors. But after all of these things have been taken into account, at June 30, our cash balance, our balance of cash in bullion, stood at AUD 89.8 million, so about AUD 90 million, and that translated to U.S. dollars of $66.5 million.
Now, this is about AUD 30 million or 51% more than the balance at 31 March, and it's AUD 44.5 million or 98% more than the balance at the end of last year, so end of December 2017. As you can see, there's been a very material increase in those balances of cash and bullion on hand. Now, given that we have outstanding bank debt at the end of June, we've decreased that to $ 63 million in accordance with our payment schedule. That gives us a net cash and bullion position at the end of the quarter of positive $3.5 million . Effectively, we're in a position where we could totally extinguish the Sissingué project debt and our working capital facility and still have cash in the bank.
So in other words, both of our mines have been fully paid for, and we have cash in the bank. Now, as I said earlier, this material growth in cash and bullion is very important to Perseus in the context of our ability to finance future growth of the company. And we fully extend this trend of cash generation to continue in coming months. In fact, as late as last Monday, our cash and bullion balance had already increased by about $6 million, thanks to the receipt of a VAT refund from the Ghanaian government and also pouring some gold at Edikan. So the trend is certainly well established, and we're looking at that very favorably. Now, if we look at each of the operations starting with Sissingué, as you're aware, we declared commercial production at the mine at the end of the March quarter.
In the June quarter, Sissingué produced 26,020 ounces, as I said. The mill head grade averaged 2.1 grams a ton, and the mill throughput rate averaged about 200 tonnes per hour. The runtime for the quarter equated about 92% of the available time, and this is interesting because at the start of the quarter, we were running at a much higher rate, around 94%, but as the rainy season set in, we had to intermittently shut down both mining and milling operations from time to time until storms passed, and so we averaged 92% for the quarter. We've actually learned to cope much better with the rain, and given that towards the end of the September quarter, we should be into fresh ore. The weather issues that have impacted operations this quarter should start to have a much smaller impact as we go forward, so that's a pleasing feature.
Now, perhaps the most important and pleasing KPI of this quarter is the gold recovery rate that we've been achieving, which has averaged 97% or about 6% higher than our initial forecast. I should stress, though, that at this point, we are processing oxide ore, so it's too early to be projecting these figures for the life of the mine, but it is enough to say that we've made a very good start, and hopefully, we can get some similarly good outcomes when we start to process the transitional and fresh ore next quarter. But I guess we'll see.
In terms of grade and tonnage reconciliations, a study on the reconciliation of tonnes and grade between the Sissingué reserve model and the mill for the period starting from the commencement of mining in November 2017 through to the end of the quarter indicates that we're getting 9% more tonnes of ore, 1% lower head grade, and that translates to 8% more contained ounces of gold. So while it is still relatively early in the mine life, as I said, to be drawing definitive conclusions, the results of this study are very encouraging and certainly suggest that the ore body is performing slightly above our expectations. In terms of operating costs, as I said earlier, this quarter we've performed extremely well on cost. The production cost came in at $462 an ounce, or all-in site cost at $520 an ounce.
Without wishing to take away from the excellent results, I should, however, note that we do expect an increase in costs in coming quarters when we start drilling and blasting of the fresh ore. That'll add something around $100+ an ounce. The cost, it depends on the number of ounces produced, of course. In any event, even with this increase, we expect that the cost from Sissingué will remain extremely competitive as we go forward. During the quarter, we sold 25,600 ounces of gold from Sissingué. We've achieved an average price there of $1,291 an ounce. That gave us an average cash margin of $771 per ounce sold, which converts to notional free cash of about $19.7 million , $20 million for the quarter. That, incidentally, represents 60% of our notional free cash flow from operations. Sissingué's up and running.
While it is a small mine relative to Edikan, it is very lucrative and makes a very significant contribution to the company. In fact, we have to say Sissingué seriously punched above its weight in the June quarter, and we've every reason to believe that the strong performance will continue going forward. The biggest single issue associated with the Sissingué mine is the mine life, which at this moment stands at about four and a half years. We think that the prospects of extending the existing mine life are very good, as our exploration team has been following up several near-mine exploration targets over the last quarter, and we're confident that one or more of these will ultimately yield additional milling feed for the Sissingué plant.
We do have a serious backlog of assays at the moment, but based on the few assays that we have received back from the lab, we do have a few very encouraging sniffs around Fimbiasso, Papara to the north of Sissingué, and also adjacent to the Sissingué pit itself. We'll be following these up with some vigor when we get the full dataset back from the assay labs and then can start developing targets for the next phase of drilling, and possibly even be in a position to re-estimate the Sissingué mineral resource in the next quarter or the quarter following from that. We are particularly encouraged about the prospects of extending the life there. Now, turning to Edikan, during the June quarter, we produced 57,861 ounces of gold, continuing the trend of strong production performances that we had achieved in the previous five quarters.
This production level's up about 6% on the previous quarter, where we did 54,000-odd ounces. Gold production for the quarter was influenced by several factors. The runtime of the plant was 5% higher than the previous quarter, and hourly rates were about the same as the prior period. The grade reconciliation remained satisfactory. Reconciliation of gold from the contained resource model to grade control is very close to 100% across all pits, and the reconciliation between grade control and the mill, the Mine Call Factor, is currently within accepted industry standards, so there's no dramas there. In fact, we have a couple of initiatives in hand where we may even be able to improve that situation even more.
We're currently mining from four different pits, and due to the variability in ore hardness, head grade, and metallurgical recovery, we needed once again to very carefully manage the blend of ore fed to the mill. As a result of that, we did achieve a 6% higher head grade, up at 1.21 grams a tonne relative to the previous quarter. But the head grade of the ore was not as high as possible, and some high-grade ore was left on the run-of-mine stockpiles at the end of the quarter to be processed in later periods. It is a challenge to get things right on this front. Now, team over there at Edikan are doing a terrific job in trying not only to hit their targets, but where possible, do better.
In this respect, it's worth noting that as of the 10th of this month, we're running about 11% of our July budget, so it's pretty clear that the team is doing something right over there, and we have to thank them for their efforts. Of course, we do the team at Sissingué who are doing an outstanding job in bringing that mine through and beating their targets very easily as well. With respect to the all-in site cost at Edikan, these have also improved incrementally during the quarter. On a cost-per-ounce basis, unit production costs, that includes all waste development processing G&A, that excludes royalty, we're down by about $23 an ounce to $9.70 an ounce, and that compares favorably to the $9.93 from last quarter. The all-in site cost for the quarter was $10.90 an ounce, and it was slightly lower than the previously reported all-in site cost.
The swing factors in the difference between production and the all-in site cost obviously are royalties and sustaining capital. The average price of gold sold during the quarter was $1,317, so $1,317 per ounce, generating a positive cash margin of $227 an ounce at Edikan, which translates to a notional cash flow of about $13 million, which in itself is not too shabby given that we haven't always been able to achieve that amount of cash flow. So all in all, Edikan is tracking fairly well at the moment. The fact is that it is a challenging mine with precious little room for error. We do make reasonable cash flow from the mine, but we're always looking for opportunities to improve this business.
In saying that, I can tell you that we are working on a few interesting initiatives at the moment, aimed at increasing cash flow from the mine, and we hope to be able to mature these thoughts and share them with the market in the not too distant future. I should say having a second mine in operation certainly means that we're no longer totally dependent on Edikan for our survival, and this allows us the latitude to think a bit outside the square for the first time and hopefully create additional value for shareholders. That's certainly what we're aiming to do. Now, I mentioned earlier our third project, Yaouré, and I mentioned that in the context of saying that our strong generation of cashflow did very well for the financing of the project.
Now, other things that we've done this quarter to advance the Yaouré project towards the development decision include the following. So we got started on the front-end engineering and design for the mine. We've engaged the services of Lycopodium to undertake this task. Now, Lyco, very well known to us, given that we work together at Edikan doing some upgrade work, but also more recently to deliver Sissingué ahead of schedule and on budget. We both learned a lot of lessons from this exercise, and Lyco, I've also learned a lot more lessons from their very successful work on other West African mine developments, including Agbaou and Houndé for Endeavour, and not to mention Mako for Toro, that produced its first gold on the same day as Sissingué earlier this year. In any event, with the wealth of experience available to us, we're working very well on this exercise.
A day or so ago, we had a very constructive discussion on a range of value engineering issues, and we're confident that the feed study will be complete and that a budget will be delivered in early October 2018 with an accuracy of plus or minus 10%. Also, during the quarter, after review by the Mines Ministry and the Minerals Commission, our application for an exploitation permit was forwarded to a ministerial committee for final sign-off before forwarding to the President of Côte d'Ivoire, who will ultimately grant the permit. Unfortunately for us, a reshuffle of cabinet occurred very late in June, which derailed the process temporarily. I gather that it's back on track now, however, and that the interministerial committee is going to be meeting next week. So hopefully, we'll have some positive news from that.
I'm heading to West Africa this weekend, and I expect that hopefully we'll be able to meet the new Minister for Mines, and hopefully we'll be able to bring the permitting exercise to a close. So we're looking forward very much to that. Negotiation of the terms of the Mining Convention, incorporating a guarantee of fiscal stability to apply for the projected life of the mine, will start immediately following the granting of the EP. And so that's one reason why we're very keen to get that milestone behind us as soon as possible. And of course, with the granting of the license, we'll then be able to finalize compensation payments to land and crop owners and move on with some early site works around the Ahouri area to secure the mine site and facilitate a rapid ramp-up to full-scale construction once the development decision's taken.
Also, just after the end of the quarter, actually, we completed a drilling program at Yaouré aimed at confirming the existence of, or otherwise, of mineral resources in areas where mineralization had been identified during earlier sterilization programs. This program of work also included drilling aimed at upgrading the inferred mineral resource to an indicated category in areas where pit optimizations were completed during the recent DFS study and where we identified additional potential for reserves. Now, as I said, that drilling is now completed. We've got about 17,000 drill samples pending from the labs in Abidjan, and when these results are received, we expect that that will be either late July or early August. And then subject, I guess, to the results that we get, we intend to prepare a revised mineral resource estimate, and we'll be publishing that hopefully during the September quarter.
The other major initiative that we have progressed this quarter, as far as Yaouré is concerned, relates to project funding. With the assistance of our corporate advisor, Gresham Partners, we evaluated a range of alternative funding mechanisms with the aim of identifying the optimum funding package available to us. We determined that, provided that there are no material changes in the market conditions and operating conditions at the two gold mines, the optimum result for shareholders will be achieved by using a combination of internally generated cash and possibly including proceeds from the exercise of warrants that mature next year sometime in April, and also a quantity of debt funding to fund the Yaouré development. To be fairly clear, at this stage, I have to say there is no plan for an equity raising to fund this project.
We can very comfortably fund the project using that combination of debt and internally generated cash. At the quarter end, the preparation of an information memorandum needed to approach and seek funding proposals from a range of pre-qualified debt providers was well in hand. Activity associated with the arrangement of the targeted debt funding will be significantly escalated in this coming quarter, with an aim of having committed offers of funding to hand in the December quarter when the board of Perseus is aiming to review all aspects of the project and hopefully take a FID and consider a full-scale development decision. The Yaouré project is also moving forward fairly much to plan, and we're very excited about this. It will make a major contribution to the company if it's executed in the way that we anticipate.
We have an excellent team to execute the project development, as we ably demonstrated by the very slick Sissingué development. And as soon as we're confident in our ability to fully fund the project, we will get underway with development. So I guess in conclusion, I just want to say, I mean, at the end of the March quarter, on the teleconference, I said the following. I said, "If we can make a couple of quick observations about this," and I was talking about our quarterly production at the end of March. "You'll note that for us to hit guidance, we need a fair increase in production in the June quarter relative to the March quarter. We are confident about achieving this for various reasons, not the least of which is we will have full three months of production from Sissingué.
And although it's still early in the quarter, both our mines are tracking well ahead of internal forecasts at this stage, so in the absence of any unforeseen events, we're quietly confident of delivering on plan." I'd just like to say we did just that. We delivered on this promise, and we've also delivered on the promise to drive down our costs and to generate cash and to advance our third mine development at Yaouré. We do expect to continue doing this going forward, and in the process, we do expect to continue to transform Perseus into a reliable, profitable, geographically diverse, geopolitically diverse multi-mine operation from which our shareholders stand to materially benefit. We do thank our shareholders for the support that they've shown us over the last 18 months or so as we've been able to get the mining operations doing what we expected them to do.
So thanks very much. I'm now happy to take any questions that you may have.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star and then two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before you ask your question. Your first question comes from Reg Spencer from Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Jeff . Congratulations on a very good quarter. I've got four questions, if I may. The first one relates to your guidance. Are you in a position, or would you be willing to provide a guidance split on an asset-by-asset basis? Because if we have a look at that overall group number, I guess it could imply a flat production performance of Edikan. And I guess the following question from that is, how should we be thinking about grades with respect to what you guys have suggested in the past with your ore-blending requirements, so on and so forth, and how that might deviate from your previous published life of mine plans?
All right. Well, look, as far as the guidance is concerned, I'll say two things about the guidance. One is one of the things we have been striving to do at Edikan is to be a consistent and reliable producer. So in other words, hitting our targets. So that has been at the back of our mind in fashioning this guidance. The other point is one I made earlier, and that is that there are a few unknowns in terms of how things will pan out over the next few months as we move forward with development. So there is an element of conservatism attached to our guidance. I do acknowledge that. In terms of giving you splits, no. I'm certainly in a position to do it, but I'm not going to. Sorry about that. But the guidance that we've given is fairly clear.
I think if you work on the basis of splits similar to what we've achieved this current quarter and quantities around this quarter, then you're not going to be very far off the mark. I mean, let's not be confused about what this guidance is. Guidance is guidance. It's not some preordained outcome at the end of the day. What we're saying is this is what we approximately think we're going to do in the forthcoming quarter. Now, I say that having delivered half a dozen quarters where we've done pretty much what we said we're going to do, and I think you can rely on that going forward.
Okay. Thank you. Next question just relates to Sissingué. You've mentioned in the past that you'd be looking to provide an updated life of mine plan. Is that still due for the September quarter or the back half of this year?
Certainly the back half of this year. I mean, we'll be aiming to get it out as soon as we practically can. I mean, we do have, as I said in my earlier announcement there, I mean, we're getting some drill results through, and of course, if that means that we've got additional ore, we'd like to factor that into things as well. So we're certainly working towards that. It will be later this year. And also, the other thing that we'd like to be able to feature in that, if it's at all possible, is if there are any changes in our forecasts of recoveries and throughput rates and the like relative to the DFS. We have seen in the oxide ore material improvements relative to the DFS.
We don't know whether those will be delivered when we hit the harder ore, but certainly in the next couple of months, it's going to reveal that for us, and if there is evidence that improvements such as that can be sustained, then we'll be factoring those into any adjustments we make to the life of mine plans.
Understood. Thank you. Next question is a quick one. Just relates to your debt. Can you remind me what the plan is in terms of current repayments or your repayment requirements on your existing debt? And I guess we would then have to weigh this in terms of what the overall mix might be when it comes to Yaouré. But can you remind me what your obligations will be over the next six to nine months?
We will be paying down roughly about $5 million a quarter. But look, frankly, that's fairly irrelevant in the go forward plan because what we expect to be doing is putting in place a revolving line of credit. Now, as soon as we do that, we'll repay the existing facilities, and then 100% of the cash flow from those operations will become available to deploy into the development of Yaouré. So whatever the repayment plan is now for those two facilities, we'll no longer be relevant once the new facilities put in place.
Okay. Great. That's absolutely it from me, Jeff. Thanks very much, and congrats on a good quarter.
Thanks, Reg.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Dylan Kelly from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Jeff. Congratulations again on the good results. Most of my questions have been answered already. I just had a question just around the recoveries at Edikan. Can you just explain just why the drop-off quarter on quarter there and exactly what happened?
Yeah. No, when it goes to this lending issue, unfortunately for us, and this is nature being its cruelest, the very high-grade material coming out of Akissou and Chirawewa, that gold is quite fine grain, and it's also associated with some carbonaceous material. Now, the temptation is to put that high-grade material through the mill as we mine it, but as we do that, we experience a drop-off in recovery. So we need to balance that out with some of the material coming from the Soares North and Fobinso. So in order to be able to keep the recoveries up. Now, that material, there is some of that stockpiled, some of the very high-grade material stockpiled, and it will be progressively fed through in coming quarters. Now, we try to maintain a blended around 10% of that material.
Every now and then, the enthusiasm gets the better of us, and we put a bit more in, and within a couple of days, you can see the impact on the recovery. So it is a day-to-day proposition, and getting this balance right is kind of tricky, and we have to be a bit disciplined in not trying to overdose with the high-grade material. But that said, we've still delivered some pretty good outcomes. So I wouldn't sweat too much on that recovery. Just to put it in perspective, so for the last 10 days, we've made a concerted effort to wind back that material, and we've seen the recoveries bounce back up to close to where they were before. So it's a temporary dip. We do understand what the causes are. We don't have the ability to grind finer than we currently are doing.
It'd be nice if we did, but we don't have that ability with the equipment that we have.
I hear that. Thanks for that, Jeff.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Michael Slifirski from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Jeff. Tremendous to see that cash, I'll be honest with you. That's absolutely tremendous. It's been a long time coming, but to see it endorse your hard work and plans, that's really tremendous. Two questions from me, if I may, please. First of all, the comments you made about Edikan's interesting initiatives to improve cash flow, is that a factor involved in you not giving full-year guidance, only giving first-half guidance? I would have thought the first half was probably more difficult to project given the uncertainty about Sissingué with sustainability of overcall, soft material, and so on. So is that reflecting potential adjustments that you might make to the Edikan plan that could impact what you would otherwise guide on a full-year basis?
Yeah, it is, Mike. I mean, we're fairly certain that in the next six months in terms of what we'll be doing at Edikan. But beyond that, depending on how our deliberations go, there may be some changes aimed at improving the cash flow from the mine. Now, we didn't really want to make a full-year statement and have to alter it materially later on. So we think that going at six months where we have a reasonable level of certainty, although having said that, the point that I did make earlier is relevant around Sissingué performance and weather impacts and things like that. There is a level of uncertainty, but we thought we'd just stick to what we were confident with.
Okay. Fine. Thank you. Second question, again, on Sissingué is the positive reconciliation between head grade and model. How far ahead do you grade control, and what insight are you getting from the grade control drilling in terms of how long that might be sustained? Is any of the grade control drilling extended into the sort of life of mine more average, or to give you any insight as to how that might look compared to the original model?
Yeah. Look, we've got the three months ahead of us, and we do have a couple of benches drilled, and we're pretty comfortable with those numbers coming through. It's an interesting ore body, actually, because I think this is something that has always been forecast going right back five or six years ago. The potential on this ore body is for overperformance because there are some very, very high-grade veins that don't get picked up in the resource model but are there in the pit. And so what that means is that our grade control is very, very important, as of course is the work of our pit geologists to visually identify material that's coming through.
In fact, one of the things that will contribute slightly to a slight elevation of our costs relative to the life of mine plan is that we've taken the decision to, in fact, drill grade control holes of 30 meters instead of shorter holes to give us further insight going ahead and also to close up the pattern so that we don't miss any of these high-grade occurrences. All in all, we're pretty comfortable with what we're seeing going forward. That is to say, we're still not necessarily seeing all of these high-grade areas until we actually get them mined. It is interesting because at times when we thought we were processing so-called low-grade stockpiles, we've been very, very pleasantly surprised at the grade that's gone through off these low-grade stockpiles. In fact, they aren't that low-grade after all in certain areas.
This is a very geology-intense mine. It means that we really have to work very hard to make sure we capture full value. If we do that, then we do stand to be very successful from it.
Yeah, so the kind of input from that is that you're getting positive reconciliation between grade control drilling and the resource model and between head grade and the grade control drilling?
We're getting positive reconciliation from resource model to mill. So that takes into account resource model to grade control, then grade control to mill. So resource model to grade control is pretty close, and then we're getting a grade control to mill is positive. Now, one of the things I should say, and I did say this in my earlier thing, is let's not project too far ahead on this because our figures that we've quoted or we've talked about, they go from the start of mining in November 2017 through till now. Now, in the upper benches of the ore body, we actually experienced significantly higher tons, significantly lower grade, less contained gold. Now, as we've gone deeper, that has reversed, and it's gone well, not reversed.
We've had more tons where we've had significantly overcall on grade and significant overcall on contained metal, which over that extended period has given us the figures that I said. So roughly 8% more in contained metal. Now, one of the things that we're not absolutely clear about, and this is why we've been a little bit hesitant to get too carried away, is that whether the results that we're seeing now represent a supergene layer sitting above the fresh material, or does this higher reconciliation continue down into the ore body? Now, we don't really know. There's schools of thought on both accounts that maybe it's supergene and this super performance may not continue going deeper. But then on the other hand, there's another school of thought that just says it was actually just the top 15 or 20 meters that was depleted from weathering processes.
So yeah, we don't know, Mike, and that's why we've been a little bit hesitant to get carried away in making bold forecasts here.
Great. Thanks, Jeff.
Thank you. That concludes our question and answer session. I'll now hand back to Mr. Quartermaine for closing remarks.
Okay. Well, thanks again for attending on this call. As I said, we are happy with the results, and we do sort of see it in some respects as being evidence that we have executed the plans that we've laid out before you. And it's always nice when a plan comes to fruition. Now, this is certainly not the end of the journey. This is just the start, and we're very much looking forward to continuing to in the same trend that we're on now, perhaps, and to delivering further good results in coming quarters. So hopefully, you'll join me in three months' time, and we'll still be feeling as pleased as we are today. Thank you very much.