I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Bryan Quinn, CEO and Managing Director. Please go ahead.
Hi, it's Bryan Quinn, Aurelia Metals Managing Director and CEO. On behalf of the team, I would like to provide you with some key points from the quarter just passed. I do thank you all for joining the call today. I'm joined by Aurelia Metals Chief Financial Officer, Martin Cummings, and our Chief Development and Technical Officer, Andrew Graham. In today's presentation, we'll be referring to the slides released today, and we'll spend some additional time on the illustrations that are within the pack for context. For December quarter, our business remained on track to execute our strategy, which included Peak increasing volumes and meters relative to previous quarters. Federation project is progressing with development meters and many other critical programs are well underway. Noting our Federation first stope ore is still planned for quarter one 2025.
Our cash position is remaining strong relative to our peers, and our operating discipline on lowering cost to offset inflationary pressures continues to be a priority, which is ongoing both in our project, our operations, and in corporate. We're starting to see some of these benefits flow through, and more work is still being targeted in Q3 and Q4 to deliver these outcomes. Through both focused efforts, especially in mining and maintenance, and I guess, we're intentionally delivering this in a sustainable way by targeting annual step change improvements. These improvements, as I've discussed previously, are built into our management KPIs. Our exploration team continues drilling in the Cobar region, with four rigs at present, and to date, delivering excellent results and exciting results for the Aurelia business. In fact, we published some of these results from Chesney North region at the Peak Mine two weeks ago.
This reinforces our view that the region and leases within the Aurelia portfolio have high prospectivity to build on the 90 million tons of resource in close proximity to Peak Mine, which includes the current 16 million tons of copper reported. With these results, we'll continue to transition the Peak Mine from a zinc lead mine to a copper mine in the medium term. I'll just move to the next slide, which is our group production and cost slide. Our delivery of our guidance at this stage remains within the range provided at the start of the year for gold ounces, which are planned to be at the high end of guidance. Base metals is forecast at the lower end of guidance, and we are resetting our guidance for copper to be outside of the previous guidance issued as per the table in the presentation.
I'll discuss the stope sequencing in more detail in coming slides to explain where we are at the end of quarter two, and how we remain on plan for the rest of FY 2024 to achieve these guidance outcomes. Our all-in sustaining costs guidance remains on track, largely on the back of higher-grade stopes on mining quarter three and quarter four, which will also be achieved by focusing on offsetting the lower copper metals production with a tight capital allocation process and lowering our operating costs across the company. I'll move on to the next slide, which is our safety environment. Aurelia Management is spending significant time improving our safety performance as we have experienced several injuries while executing against our strategy. Our unwavering focus is to ensure everyone working at Aurelia Metals has the right to go home without an injury.
We've unfortunately had several trips and slips and hand injuries this year to date, and Aurelia did have a very strong year with minimal injuries in FY 2023. So it demonstrates that we need to keep working diligently on these areas, so injuries are prevented, and our teams remain focused at all times when at work. This is our highest priority, and we cannot rest until we experience... till we are not experiencing injuries. Therefore, our focus from our leadership is the following: One, we're spending time in field really discussing safety and hazards with our teams and using the appropriate tools before starting work. We're recognizing that both preventing injuries and fatalities need to be a focus, and to complement this, we've also commenced a supervisor leadership program across our business.
To focus on potential fatalities, we've commenced a detailed scheduled program, reviewing one fatal risk hazard each month across each site, to get the management to really understand what controls need to be in place. Number three, leadership will also be spending time assessing the higher risk of each of their businesses, making sure controls are adequately working, and people nominated as risk and control owners understand their responsibilities. Our priority is to reverse the trend and reduce the number of injuries being experienced by our team members, while also stopping any more serious. I'll move on to the slides for each of the assets and projects. I'll ask Andrew to talk in more detail to the exploration results and Martin to expand on financial results shortly. But before I do, I'll focus on some specific Q2 highlights and information regarding each of the businesses.
At a high level, our operating cash flow was higher than the previous quarter, delivering AUD 23 million, compared with quarter one, AUD 12.6 million. Overall cash balance remaining around AUD 108.7 million, supported by strong liquidity, and I'll ask Martin to talk to in more detail to the liquidity. At Peak, the mining production volumes have increased a further 11% from Q1, in line with our plans to continue to fill our mills with quality ore. On the flip side, the all-in sustaining costs were higher in December quarter two versus September quarter one, due to lower base metals production, which is a direct result of the sequencing of stopes, which I'll cover in more detail in our slide 7. Development at Peak has continued to increase, which is a key value driver for us. It's basically fourth consecutive quarter increase.
It's now achieving 743 meters, which really allows the development to be ahead by more than one quarter and unlocks our production stopes, which I'll demonstrate also in our slide 7. This is providing contingency options and helps us de-risk the mining production over the next six months. In quarter two, an additional production rig was commissioned to do bottleneck drilling activities also, which further unlocks these stopes and the rest of this financial year's performance. The focus is to get the bottleneck back to the winder over the medium term, once improvements in drill and blast and trucking have also been implemented. The overall cost of mining per ton continued to decrease at AUD 123 per ton over the past quarter, with further improvements underway planned in the pipeline.
Not forgetting, this was over $143 per ton several quarters ago. An example of the next step change in efficiency include the future use of our winder for people riding, which will increase utilization of our mining assets underground and improve productivity. With respect to grades of lead zinc, I will use the Illustration seven for peak to explain the sequencing and look forward to provide some context of how the sequencing will be achieved in FY 2024. So if I just go to the illustration for the actual slide seven, you'll see that from a context point of view, our development currently is definitely well ahead of this quarter and into the next quarter.
So if you look at the Upper Chronos and the Lower Chronos and also the Perseus area, we're trying to provide transparency that we have these areas ready to go. And also, if you look at the call outs of the 19,000 tons, 29.5, and the 37,000 tons, which are all Q3 activity, basically, they are the stopes that we've moved from Q2 to Q3. Unfortunately, we had to resequence our stopes in Q2 and bring the Q3 stopes forward into Q2, and vice versa, move the Q2 stopes into Q3, and hence the changes in the grades that you will see in our table that we've reported. So overall, if you look at the remainder of Q3 and Q4 activity, we have our stopes well and truly in front of us.
We have high-grade material being produced right now in line with what's in the schedule, and we're sort of on track to deliver what we've put in the guidance table. Just let me jump a bit more to the illustration, just to make sure that we're... For those who can't see the PowerPoint pack, we have got basically 90,000 tons this quarter at 16% lead zinc. We have 29,500 tons at 27% lead zinc, and we have 37,000 tons, 11.5% lead zinc, with an additional 3.7 grams per ton gold. So they are the stopes that we would have taken in quarter two, but have been moved to quarter three. And obviously, as I said before, we've moved stopes from quarter three into quarter two.
Hence, on a total year basis, we feel we're actually in a good position to deliver our numbers that we're recording in the tables. This implementation, the other large bit of work we've done in the Cobar region is the implementation of a regional Cobar leadership model. On the previous quarters, I've discussed the implementation of a hub and a spoke model or a regional Cobar model. We've actually completed that in the December quarter, and now we're implementing it in the March quarter. This will provide synergies, cost benefits to Aurelia in the region for the medium term by having one leadership team led by a regional GM leading the operational activities.
This is an opportunity really around standardization of equipment, training, working capital, and optimizing the feed into the Peak to value as we progress with production from Federation towards Peak. If I just move to the Dargues slide, on slide eight. At Dargues, we continue to provide strong operational stability and credibility, even with some significant weather events. In fact, one rainfall event had 126 millimeters over 48 hours in November, followed by another three-day event at 87 millimeters in December. And the team have done well, focusing on tangible cost-saving initiatives over this period as well. Development has now stopped for the remaining life, and so, our development costs have also stopped.
Looking forward for Dargues, importantly, the last stopes will be extracted on retreat out of the mine, if you refer to slide eight, and we are also in the process of doing some significant planning around what happens post-closure, how we reuse equipment at both Peak and Federation, and also look at the process of selling the plant and also the potential mine. Retention programs are fully locked in now for people working at Dargues, and really the key focus for us is delivering safely the remaining stopes on the job for the next six months till the end of the mine. For Dargues, our focus remains on safely maximizing cash flow for the remaining stopes. This is what we basically spoke about every quarter so far, and we are delivering that.
At Federation, development at Federation has continued to ramp up from previous quarter after restarting development in August. Some significant weather events actually have occurred in January in the region, Nymagee region, and actions have been implemented underway to provide some protection for these in the future. But notwithstanding the fact, we've actually had to pause development for a period of time to deal with those heavy rainfall events, acknowledging that construction is still underway at the site and that the site isn't finished and we've got to put these various controls in place as we progress the development of the project. The concrete collar foundations for raise bore shafts were finished in Q2, and the first raise bore was actually mobilized in Q2.
I'm actually happy to report that shaft 1 has been completed in terms of the raise bore, and we've actually allowed us to de-risk the next couple of shafts by understanding the geotech conditions much more as well. Actually, the latest report is we finished the shotcrete lining also in the last 24 hours. The Burthong Road upgrade has been progressing and on track for completion in Q3, while dealing also with some significant weather impacts recently. Just over 2 km of the 8 km road has been sealed at the end of Q2, and currently we're working to complete the work by quarter three, end of quarter three.
Some other key milestones, which are important to call out is the underground electrical substation is being installed in the decline and, in the decline in commission, and we'll also start the underground infill drilling, has been in place and, working on the final designs of the stage for our production sequence. Lastly, at a strategic, strategic level, our growth team continues to work on optimization options of our portfolio in the Cobar region to utilize our infrastructure as we continue to set up our, our operations to be at full capacity in the future. So lots of work still going on in the region on our optimization work, as we discussed in previous quarters as well.
Overall, these results are testament to the Aurelia team delivering, navigating fluctuations in weather events on the eastern states, causing many disruptions, a very tight labor market for talent, and our business has been resilient and delivered the cash to fund our exploration and growth projects, and not draw on any debt facilities at this point in time. Federation's still on track for first ore in September quarter one of 2025. It's based on the delivery of the Burthong Road upgrades progressing well. Development has been progressing. The first raise bore work has been started in December, and as I said, many other activities are underway to deliver us and be ready for those events. In terms of costs for the project, we're also continuing to deal with inflationary pressures on many fronts.
We're managing these currently through reviewing the scope of works for all activities to ensure what's required for the project, and refining some of these to manage the overall budget. However, at present, we're focused on delivering first ore in Q1 2025 and delivering the project along budget. Lastly, today, we also released the changes to the board of directors. Obviously, we thank Paul and Helen very much for being directors and for the guidance they've provided the management team and support of the rest of the directors on the board. I personally have learned a lot from both Paul and Helen over their time as directors on the board, and we wish them all the best. I'll pass over to Andrew now to talk to the exploration slides, and he'll pass it on to Martin thereafter. Thanks, Andrew.
No, thank you, Bryan, and for those following along, we're just turning to page 10 at the moment. It's certainly great to be back to running a fully funded exploration program this year. We've said it numerous times over the last year that our ground is very prospective, and when we explore it in a systematic way, we're very sure that we'll have success, and this quarter is certainly evidence of that. Obviously, as Bryan referred to, we had a very successful drill program at Chesney North, where all six holes completed in that program hit significant copper, as well as gold in some holes. That was the subject of an announcement on the 18th of January, and I'll cover that in a little bit more detail shortly.
For those looking at the slide, just be aware that the green boxes appear to have shuffled a little bit to the right. So just assume they're all a little bit further left, but it won't change your understanding of what we're doing there. Basically, what we've been doing at Peak is progressing our high priority targets. And we do a process every year of thinking about where we want to be drilling, prioritizing those methodically, and then working through them. So for Peak, particularly in the last quarter, doing some work around Jubilee North, you can see that just to the northern end of the North Mine. We have been drilling around Upper Blue lens, which is back down in the South Mine, at Peak North.
And also, we've been drilling around Chesney, as I referred to those results earlier. Excitingly to me, we've also stepped out to drill Mount Pleasant. And it's been covered up by the green box in this slide, but if you think about North Mine and track back, we've got obviously the New Cobar, ore bodies. You get into Chesney, next one along is Burrabungie, and what we're chasing now is the next one along, Mount Pleasant. Mount Pleasant had some drilling in it, which was, you know, really quite interesting in 1997, I believe, and again in 2007. But it really hasn't been methodically tested recently, so it's really exciting to be able to get some holes into that. You know, hoping that we continue to stack up those ore bodies in the North Mine.
We are awaiting assays on some drilling there, and we'll let you know once we get those results. The other interesting piece, which isn't on this slide, but, you know, you're all fully aware of what we have, it's what we call the Nymagee District, which covers Federation and Hera and the Nymagee Mine itself in that whole region. The team down there has been extremely busy, so we've been completing soils on Lancelot. You may recall from last year the exciting IP results that we got around there. So the next step in that exploration plan is to do detailed soils. Hopefully, you know, we get good results on that, which then helps us target our exploration work with drilling. So we'll come back to you obviously with those results once they come in.
We've been also doing drilling at the historic Nymagee Mine, and also drilling for extensions around Federation. And again, we've got results which sort of were along the lines of what we were expecting geologically. Those are in for assay at the moment. Once we have those assays, we'll come back to you with that information on that. Turning then to slide 11, which is the Chesney summary of Chesney North drilling. This is linked to the announcement that went out on the eighteenth of January, and if you haven't read that announcement, I'd certainly encourage you to download that and have a look. We were targeting extensions to the northern end of the resource at Chesney. Chesney is an important place for us from the point of view of copper feed.
And you can see what we were trying to do was fill in that hole in the resource to the north. Excitingly, as I mentioned earlier, all 6 holes in that program delivered very, very good copper. And you can see that in some of the core tray photos we've got there. Extremely good grades, good meters, 17 meters at 1.8% copper in one of those holes, which included 3.4 meters at 5.3% copper, and similarly, 7.6 at 2.2% copper in another hole. And that hole included up to 9.7% copper over 0.8 of a meter.
It's excellent to be able to see good copper results all outside the resource there at Chesney, but all within close proximity of where we're expecting to be mining. And, you know, hopefully, these add to the very substantial resource we have at Peak on copper at the moment, which as Bryan referred to, 16 million tons at 1.8% copper and 0.8 gold. And it does actually create some optionality for us, which we referred to in that release, around how we sequence copper feeds, and then when we target Great Cobar. So definitely very exciting drilling for us. I'll pass over now to Martin, who's gonna run through some of the financial results.
Thanks, Andrew, and I'll just turn to slide 12, titled Balance Sheet. And again, it's been really pleasing to report that our operations have fully funded our growth at Federation and our regional exploration this quarter, which as Andrew has just highlighted, is delivering excellent results and really justifies that critical investment. We've maintained our cash balance around $110 million for the quarter, and as that has been further bolstered in January with the receipt of the tax refund of AUD 17.8 million. Along with our undrawn $24 million or around AUD 36 million loan note, it takes our available liquidity to over $160 million. You'll note that the tax refund amount is slightly lower than what I highlighted last quarter. The main change of that was in finalizing the return.
We picked up some additional adjustments that we put through that reduced the tax loss we recognized for FY 2023, and that lowered the, the refund amount, and that was done as part of our assurance process prior to lodging the return. As Bryan covered earlier, we're moving to higher grade stopes at Peak in the second half, and cash flow from the operation is expected to increase further. The resequence of the mine plan at Peak means our gold group production is now forecast in the upper half of guidance, zinc and lead in the lower half, and we've made a change to our copper guidance, given our, our outlook was for it to be below guidance. Our new copper production guidance is 2,000-2,300 tons for the year.
These changes to the production mix, along with a focus on operating costs at both sites, means our cost guidance continues to track to the original guidance of $1,850-$2,050 per gold ounce. At Dargues, we're pleased that our focus on cash is generating strong results. This quarter, we did have an additional shipment that was delayed from the September quarter, but it also reflects the ongoing focus from the team on cost management, with spend at the operation year to date below our plans. Now that we've completed the hedging program I talked about last quarter, the operation will benefit from high gold prices for the remainder of its life, with an average gold price of $3,072 an ounce from here.
Our Peak gold production remains unhedged, but we have hedged around 25% of our payable lead and zinc production, which does provide some protection to our all-in sustaining costs. The hedge prices are around the current market. At Federation, the team have achieved some important milestones this quarter with AUD 18.4 million spent, which was up from AUD 10.6 million in the prior quarter. This takes our total investment at Federation year to date to AUD 29 million. Spend at the project is expected to increase in the March quarter to around AUD 25 million-AUD 30 million, with mine development continuing, completion of the road upgrade, and the continued raise boring activity. Spend guidance for Federation remains within the AUD 70 million-AUD 80 million guided. Finally, exploration spend was higher this quarter as the team ramped up their drilling programs.
We're maintaining guidance of AUD 10 million-AUD 15 million for exploration this year, which, as mentioned earlier, has delivered fantastic results to date. So in closing, another really pleasing quarter where our strong cash generation was able to fund our growth. We remain focused on delivering the higher planned production from Peak in the second half and continuing our focus on cost reductions at both operations. Thanks for your time today. I'll hand the call back to Bryan now.
Thanks, Martin. Just to wrap up, I wanted to discuss at a high level, reinforcing our messages. We are really focused on safely delivering the FY 2024 guidance and our growth outcomes. Once again, slide 13, our focus is on delivering mining sequence and lowering costs at Peak as per the previous quarters, maximizing our cash generation at Dargues, the remaining life of Dargues, as we've discussed in the previous quarters. Our sort of real focus is on making sure that we can deliver first scope ore at Federation in quarter one in FY 2025.
We're continuing to work on optimization of the Cobar region, and that's looking at how we fill our mills with the right sort of minerals from each of the operations. And exploration to deliver growth options is obviously a very high priority to enable us to have a very clear path for growth, as Andrew discussed. And importantly, is obviously continuing to attract and retain talent in the Cobar region as well. As I mentioned, we've set up a Cobar regional model, where we have a regional general manager. We are obviously actively looking for management to be part of that, for some of the roles, to be part of that leadership team.
That leadership team will oversee both Peak and Federation, and any other future projects we bring online as well. It's a very important change to how the organization's going to work, and as I said, from attraction and retention, but also from a efficiency, productivity, and a cost point of view as well. I'd like to just wrap up by really thanking the board of directors and obviously the outgoing two directors for their support and wish them all the best. I'd like to also reinforce the importance and the focus that the leadership team, the ELT, has put in so far, in line with our strategy and vision. They're doing a great job of continuing to focus on these key deliverables.
Lastly, I'd really wanna just make sure I reinforce thanks to our teams at our sites and also our contracting partners, who are sort of really working hard to enable us to deliver this plan for FY 2024. With that, I'll pass over to Darcy to take to open up for questions and answers.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Paul Kaner from Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks, Bryan and team. Thanks for taking my question. Just a couple here from me. Firstly, on Peak, those two stopes that have been delayed, can you maybe just comment in a bit more detail about what sort of happened there with the drill and blast?
Yeah, sure. Thanks for that question. Look, basically, we had some delays due to drilling activities, and thankfully, due to the development being in the condition it was, we're able to move on to other stopes to extract those instead. We didn't lose those stopes or anything else, so just delay due to some drilling activities that slowed us down. So just pushed them into the next quarter. So, we've obviously gone and actually got a third drill now, third production drill. So we have two that we're currently contracting with Redpath, and we've got a third now with our Aurelia team as well.
So we've sort of moved that off the bottleneck, if you wanna call it, by having the additional rig in there and more of a focus on less hole clean outs and making sure we've got a proper good standard in place for drilling activities.
So more a sort of, drill rig availability rather than labor availability issue there?
Actually, a bit of both, to be honest. So a bit of both, and also a bit of redrill, clean, hole clean out, performance as well. So I guess there's several things which have slowed our drilling performance down. We've also had some delays with some of the blasting activities, but we've rectified both of those now, actually, by putting additional resources in, bringing additional equipment in, and a very clear focus on those things, but additional technical people in as well into the team to focus on this.
Part of the regional model we've put in place, we've actually put a tech services manager, an acting tech services manager in place, now overseeing both Federation and Peak, to really ensure that we have these sort of things well and truly planned and done well.
Yeah, no, that's great. Thanks. Thanks for the color there. And then just secondly, maybe a question for Andrew, but just on Great Cobar, a nice little sort of resource just sitting there, probably not being valued properly by the market. I mean, have you thought of other ways to potentially realize value from that asset, given your capital is currently tied up with Federation?
Yeah, Paul,
Over to you, Andrew.
Yeah, thanks, Bryan. Just a couple of things on that. So, as Bryan alluded to, a focus for us is getting, basically filling our mills. And we will do that once, Federation starts to come on. The thing that we are looking at, though, is which ores go to where, and when you're bringing Hera back on, for example, on the Hera Mill, and also what do you feed into the Peak Mill, in particular, also, what's possible with the Peak Mill? It has a bunch of latent capacity within that mill, that you can unlock with some very targeted spend. The other bit, and I sort of alluded to it when we looked at the Chesney drilling, is the sequence and the timing of when you do Great Cobar.
So if we have excellent competitive NSR ore at the Peak Mine that we can get out in the quantities we need without Great Cobar, then we'll think about when we need to target Great Cobar to bring those tons on. Look, I'm 100% sure Great Cobar will be mined. You know, it's an excellent ore body, great grade, good gold credits. The thing for us is around when do you optimize that mining? You know, is it worth getting across there and starting to mine sooner? You would only do that if you don't have the ores to otherwise feed at that sort of value.
The other bit we're looking at is just timing of Great Cobar as far as accessing it, and whether it is worth getting across there sooner to be able to drill it from underground. So there's a whole lot of work going on in that space, and once we have some definitive answers, we'll obviously bring that to investors.
Just to cover that, so the dot point around progressing optimization of Cobar region on slide 13, that's what I was referring to, Paul. It's really around getting all the information that Andrew's working on and then taking it to the board of, this is how we think going forward is the right sequence. And then obviously we'll consider, you know, what options are available to move forward with that, whether we accelerate it or keep it moving at the same pace. That'll all be an investment decision we bring forward to the board.
Yeah, no. Understood. No, thanks for that color . I appreciate it. Cheers.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Bill Murray, Private Investor. Please go ahead.
The Federation project is about six months away. Have you given any thought to the stope sequencing? What I'm really after is, would you be thinking of going for the gold ore or the lead-zinc ore initially?
Andrew, do you wanna answer that question, then I'll follow it up?
Yeah, no problem, Bryan, and good morning to you, Bill. Look, I think the reality is, as we ramp up Federation, we will just be taking ore, full stop. And we won't be preferentially targeting gold or lead zinc ore in the first instance. If you look at the section of Federation, it starts out a little bit skinny on a sort of tons to vertical meter basis, and it grows as you go deeper. So our target then will be getting those stopes in a good sequence, but also getting multiple mining areas open as well, to allow us to ramp up towards that 600. One of the things we've chatted about previously on calls is understanding that gold. It is quite variable across the ore body.
Certainly now that we're underground drilling, infill drilling, it'll really help us understand that a lot better and then allow us to think about, you know, what are we gonna target and when. Just as an aside, our general manager of tech service is actually down at the site this week, working with the team around sequencing of stopes coming out of Federation. And that'll all be absolutely informed and improved as we get that drilling from underground.
Thanks, Bill.
Just another question then. What tax losses do you have carried forward? When Federation comes on stream, hopefully it'll be a very profitable operation. What sort of quantum of tax losses have you got to offset against the profits?
Hi, Bill, it's Martin here. So I guess the main tax shield that we carry at the moment relates to Dargues. So, when we impaired the asset in June 2022, we impaired it in the accounts, but we don't take that impairment through the tax books. So as we finish up at Dargues, that will generate tax losses that we'll then be using to apply to tax profits elsewhere in the group. So, you know, we don't have, you know, a tax payable in the foreseeable future, given that tax shield.
Could you put a ballpark number on that?
Let me work through. We're doing our half year accounts at the moment, so I don't really want to put a number out while we're still working through our tax position as of thirty-one December, but I'll look to put some color in the half year results in end of February.
Thanks. Just one final one. The regional strategy, the Peel assets, spring to mind. Without sort of nominating them as such, is that the sort of thing that you would be looking at? You know, maybe joint venturing with a operation with Peel, and they've got a number of mines here that look quite interesting.
Andrew, do you want to speak to that first?
Yeah, happy to, Bryan. As I mentioned, Bill, the target for us is filling our own mills. At the moment, we've got a very large resource base, particularly at Peak. We've got, as Bryan mentioned earlier, 19 million tons of resource sitting there at Peak. So the real target for us is to look at how we exploit our own ore bodies and fill those mills. Obviously, if we find ourselves at a point in time, unable to fill the mill with our own ores, it may make sense for some of those regional tons to come in. And, you know, I have spent a bit of time in the last few months getting to know our neighbors and understanding what they've got, thinking about what we might be able to do synergistically.
But really, our priority and the work we're doing at the moment is thinking about what we can do with our own mills and our own ore bodies, which are substantial.
Yeah, I think it's important, Bill. We have got the infrastructure, and we have got a really nice piece of resource between Great Cobar down to Federation. So, we need to make sure we optimize what we have first before we look over the fence to see if there's any we can add into that mix as well. But it's gonna be all commercial and all very much what's maximum value for our shareholders.
Okay, thanks very much. That's all from me.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. We'll now pause a moment to allow for any final questions to register. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Quinn for closing remarks.
Thanks, everyone, for joining today and for the questions we've been asked. Obviously, we'll be coming out with our half year results at the end of February, which we look forward to presenting to you guys. And as I said, we've got a lot of work to do to deliver our vision and our strategy as a company. I believe we've got the right sort of infrastructure, resource, and people to deliver this, and we look forward to continuing the journey to get to where we want to get to, to fill our mills at the right value for everyone and who supports the company. So once again, thanks to all of our employees and investors for their support so far.
Look forward to speaking to you guys in about a month's time. Thank you very much.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.