I would now like to hand the conference over to Bryan Quinn, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Welcome to everyone for joining this call to allow us to present our June quarter results update for 2023. I'm actually dialing in from the Noosa Mining Conference today where I'll be presenting tomorrow, actually. More detail on the Aurelia Metals and our quarter results. Please look out for this information as it'll be registered tomorrow on the ASX. On the call, joining me from Aurelia Metals, I have Andrew Graham, Interim CEO, Martin Cummings, Chief Financial Officer, and Peter Trout, Chief Operating Officer. We're actually excited to present to you the fourth quarter results today. I'll commence by talking through some of those highlights for Aurelia.
It's actually been a very strong quarter and half year for Aurelia in terms of financial improvement and setting up for FY 2024. Firstly, I would like to emphasize the outcomes of safety at the operating assets. The operating assets and projects have managed safely, exceptionally well, with major step changes achieved and reducing total recordable injuries. In fact, I was on site this week celebrating Dargues' 12-month injury-free lunch, followed by an underground visit to the operating stakes. Production from the operating assets have delivered in line with our FY 2023 guidance, and so has the All-in Sustaining Cost for the business. We've experienced some welcomed tailwinds and prices from some of the commodities, for example, gold, balanced out by some of the softer prices in other commodities like zinc.
Martin will talk through some of these details in a couple of minutes during the presentation. Obviously, we'll provide the full year results, financials on these outcomes in our reporting period, in the next couple of months as well. During the quarter, some material activities have been completed, including the Hera care and maintenance. As we reported in the March quarter, we've also now transitioned the owner-operator at Peak and resourcing up to deliver into FY 2024 with Aurelia employees and equipment. We've also made some excellent decisions to fully pay back all debt on the balance sheet in the June quarter, which puts Aurelia Metals in an excellent position to take on the new financing facility, for our next major Federation project.
This also positions us very well to look at project pipeline itself on our next projects after Federation is successfully completed in August 2023. We'll provide more details on the sort of outlook in the full year results. To set up 56 for Federation during the June quarter, once the funding solution was delivered, we've been focused on remobilization of Redpath, our underground construction contractor, in addition to tendering out packages and focusing on critical path items to ensure we deliver the project on time and cost. We've also appointed a very experienced project director, Michelle Tracey, who will report to myself and lead the project, who is on the ground at Federation as we speak.
I've spent the last five weeks getting to know the people, the assets, the potential in our resource, and some of the shareholders and investors, thanks to all those who have provided me feedback. As a result, I've developed a focused 100-day plan, which I'll talk to you towards the end of the call. This is aimed to really leverage the improved performance over the last six months and set up our company for exciting outcomes over the coming years. In summary, a very good finish to the year in the last half of FY 2023 in safety, operating, production, balance sheet and cash, setting up Project Federation, and importantly, setting ourselves up for an exciting financial year, 2024.
To get run through some of the details, I'll firstly hand it over to Andy Graham, who is the Interim CEO, to talk in more details on the guidance outcomes for the past quarter. Over to you, Andrew.
Thanks, Bryan. Also, like Bryan, I'm at the Noosa Conference this week, so if there's a bit of background noise, I certainly apologize for that. Those who joined us at the AGM in December or November would have appreciated at that stage there were a few things absolutely critical to me in my time as Interim CEO. One of those was doing what we said, so delivering on guidance. You know, those who are following along on the presentation on slide four, we provide a summary of that. I'm very, very pleased to say that we have achieved guidance across the board on all commodities and also on non-sustaining costs for the full year. I'm talking in a little bit more detail about that, you know, March was very strong.
When we look at the June quarter compared to the March quarter, it does seem a bit softer. The first thing people should be aware of is that we didn't have Hera in the June quarter. March includes three operating assets. June quarter includes two. Therefore, we did see a reduction in production of commodities. That said, particularly, Peak was making a lot of base metals, less gold, and therefore, we did see a shift to base metals in the June quarter, when we saw, say, gold. I look at costs, it's probably the one that was concerning me most. When we talked in the March quarter, we looked at the commodity graphs.
All were on track to achieve guidance, and I'm pleased to say that they did, and gold at top end of that range. You know, price, cost was probably the area we need to focus to achieve our target of AUD 2,300 for the year. Pleased to say the half year came in below AUD 2,000, which I recall traveling through Sydney, meeting investors very early in my time as Interim CEO, and that was the one area most people believed wasn't achievable. Because of that, we needed to achieve below AUD 2,000 for All-in Sustaining. As you can see on the graph on the right, we did that, and therefore came in on guidance on around that AUD 2,300 All-in Sustaining per ounce.
Critical to us as a business, demonstrating that we say what we're going to do, and then we do what we say, and that's something, you know, you can expect from us going forward. Similarly, around the time of the AGM and in the same theme of doing what we say, I did say with people that safety was a key item for me. I'm a strong believer that safe production, good and production go hand in hand with safety. It's certainly what we've seen, and I'll talk about that in a moment in relation to Dargues. Across the whole group, we had a very pleasing result for the six months in that we had no recordable injuries through to the end of June.
That has meant our total recordable frequency rate has dropped into the fives, which is a fantastic result when you consider we're operating three underground mines. The other thing to consider and keep in mind there is that it wasn't steady state. Things weren't stable. The business was going through quite a state of flux corporately, but also operationally. Bryan touched on it. We turned off Hera at the end of March and had to take that site to care and maintenance. You know, a site moving to the end of its period of operation into care and maintenance is certainly weighing on the minds of people, as well as introducing a whole bunch of work to business as usual.
The other item that Bryan touched on is we took Peak to owner-operated mining as well through that period, it was extremely pleasing to see us come out of Life-of-Mine and move into owner-operator and not have any safety incidents in that period of time. The other one touched on in slide five is our record of environmental incident frequency rate. Just saying that our Group Manager of Environment, Johan Theron, effectively was the architect of that, it has been recognized as a finalist in the NSW Mining HSEC Awards. Pleasingly, we set ourselves a target for the year of three, we've come in at 2.9.
As well as not harming people, we're pleased to say we're having a minimal impact on the environment as well. I did talk about good safety results going hand in hand with good operational results, the reality we move to slide six, which is the Dargues result. For an underground mine in Australia, this is really quite incredible in that they have not had a recordable injury in 12 months. Therefore, total recordable injury frequency rate, which is a 12-month moving average, have moved to zero. That's something, you know, stats is incredible, if you think about what that actually means, it means we haven't hurt people to the point of a recordable injury in the last 12 months, that's what safety is all about.
People come to work, do their jobs, and can go home in as good a state or better state than they arrived. There's a photo on slide six of a chunk of our workforce, underground workforce, particularly, all very pleased with our outcome. It's hats off on the safety outcome to Peter Trout, as well as our three operations general managers for driving that. It doesn't happen with no work, and it's really great to see everyone focused on their own safety, but also the safety of their workmates, to ensure continuity of operations and the production performance that we saw on achieving guidance for the full year. That's all I'm going to cover, and to cover the assets in a bit more detail, I'll hand across now to Peter Trout.
Thanks, Andrew, good morning to everyone on the call today. As you can probably pick up from Bryan and Andrew's comments, it was a very busy quarter across our business and all the sites. I'll discuss each site's results for the quarter with reference to the presentation slides released this morning. Starting with slide seven for our Peak operation. Over the quarter, the volume of ore mined and processed at Peak was stable relative to the prior quarter. This quarter, though, the majority of the mill feed was sourced from lead zinc ore, which made up around 2/3 of the feed tonnage, compared to about 50% of the tonnage in the prior quarter. That then flowed through into the metal production we've reported today.
Zinc and lead metal production was high, with a substantial 78% increase in zinc metal, which is due to the higher grades we saw from the Kronos deposit in accordance with the mine plan, and also the greater proportion of lead zinc ore in the mill feed. Correspondingly, copper metal production was down about 453 tons, and that was because less copper ore was processed and we treated lower grades over the quarter. Gold production reduced by 37% to 6,400 ounces, which was in line with the lower mine feed grades. During the quarter, we completed major planned shutdowns on the shaft hoisting system and the process plant.
More work is planned during the September quarter to replace structure steel in the mill and perform remediation tasks in the south mine shaft system, so it can bring it back into full personnel riding capability. I would like to comment on underground mining performance at Peak, because whilst we've completed our owner mining transition, it's not where we want to be. There's been a series of initiatives in place to lift productivity and ultimately our ore production rates, which are the important drivers of unit costs and operating margin at Peak. As part of this program, development rates were ramped up from the March quarter and will increase further into the current quarter as we establish access to future stoping areas. These include the recently delineated Chesney East Zone at the North Mine.
We've seen positive results from these initiatives across the site, we'll continue to pursue them over the current and future quarters. If we move now to slide eight, which talks to our Dargues mine, we produced a bit over 9,000 ounces of gold for the quarter. That contributed 57% of the group's total gold production for the quarter, remembering now that we don't have Hera as part of the mix. Strong production volumes at site were maintained. Slight increases in the tons mined and processed, we've made full use of the development consent modification received in mid-December last year to increase volumes through the process plant. As we mentioned in the March quarter results, development rates have reduced in line with the mine plan. This is contributing to a reduction in site spend, also unit cost.
We've now completed development of the lowest mining level, and are now focused on development in the upper remnant mining areas, where we have seen some good grades come through there, and we'll set that area up for production over the coming quarters. Another important activity during the quarter was the update to the Dargues' Life-of-Mine plan, which consolidated the results we've received from the infill and extensional drilling programs that were completed in the March quarter. The Life-of-Mine plan confirmed that mining and processing will finish during the first half of FY 2025, and shows we can deliver a strong cash contribution from Dargues' over the remaining period of Life-of-Mine. Turning now to slide 9. We transitioned the Hera site to care and maintenance during the quarter, and completed demobilization of contractors, personnel, and plant.
That process went very well, as Andrew noted, it's not a ordinary activity for us, and the effort from the site management team there, and the contributions of our contractors employees, was key to delivering that result. The final process plant cleanup delivered 540 ounces of gold, which provided a nice revenue contribution. The slide you can see there, or the photo you can see on slide nine, just shows that final bar pulled from Hera. Activities at the site are now focused on preservation of the existing assets for use in the Federation project and future processing operations. I'd also like to comment on the Working Smarter Program, which is covered on slide 10 of the presentation deck. This is a real highlight for the business over the last eight months or so.
We've seen a number of cost and efficiency benefits banked from this program, which was launched in November last year. This is all about drawing upon the knowledge and ideas from our workforce. It's really good to see over 600 ideas submitted, and 220 of those validated and taken through to implementation. The example on slide 10 shows members of our underground service crew at Peak, who have just finished setting up a 3D load scanner. It gives us real-time feedback on the volume of rock load in each haul truck tray. By use of this data, we can provide feedback to our loader operators, so they can fully utilize the tray capacity and thereby improve the payload moved per load. Just a small example of one of the many productivity and cost initiatives underway at Peak at the moment.
When we stand back and look at the Working Smarter Program, we set ourselves a really challenging target back in November, to deliver AUD 24 million in benefits. We really knew that was a stretch for the business. Getting to that final result of AUD 25.6 million in benefits is a real credit to everyone who's contributed to that program across our entire organization. On that note, I'll hand over to Bryan to talk to the Federation project.
Yeah, thanks, Peter. Look, very Federation is a very exciting project for Aurelia Metals and supports our ambition actually, my ambition to take Aurelia Metals to be developer and operator of choice in base metals and namely copper and zinc. We are resourcing our project with very experienced leadership and contractors to ensure we can meet our schedule and costs safely that we've committed to. The operating model that we're setting up really will be something we'll replicate for our future projects with a very experienced team. At present, the team is on remobilization, getting the safety management systems in place, vent shaft planning and tendering for various critical path activities, including rail upgrades, et cetera.
I was recently on site and can report the site is well set up for remobilization, and workforce camp is also ready to go in very good condition. With the appointment of Michelle Tracey, that's a massive opportunity for us to leverage her experience and her contacts, and obviously be able to deliver this project in a very disciplined way in line with our targets. We'll obviously be providing more updates on a quarter-by-quarter results basis on how we're tracking against this project. Once again, I'll just reinforce, it's a very exciting opportunity to really build this mine in a very, very good location and close to our facilities in the Cobar Province. I'll hand it back to Martin now to talk to the financials.
Thanks, Bryan. I'll be turning to slide 12, and in addition to the great outcomes on safety and operations that the team has taken me through, the June quarter also included our significant milestone of announcing the new Trafigura funding package and completion of the equity raise. This will now enable us to restart development of Federation, as Bryan has said. I'll now step through the waterfall items on this slide, and then I'll update where we are on the refinance process. We finished the quarter with a cash balance of AUD 38.9 million, and as outlined in the June operating performance, we continue to focus on ensuring our assets are cash positive, with just under AUD 15 million of cash flow generated.
As we flagged in the March quarterly, operating cash flow was expected to be lower this quarter, with cessation of operations at Hera at the end of March, and due to the March quarter, including some additional concentrate sales related to prior period production. In addition to those items, this quarter at Peak, we did incur some higher concentrate treatment charges, with some of that due to the higher sales in the prior quarter, and we also invested in a new haul truck for the underground fleet. The Dargues' operating cash flow remains strong. It is benefiting from the current favorable gold prices and from the planned reduction in mine development. In FY 2024, our focus really is on continuing to maximize the operating margins of our assets, in particular at Peak.
A key enabler to lowering Peak's unit costs is to increase volumes, particularly given there is spare milling capacity available. Our attention as a management team is now firmly on realizing those activity improvements, as well as rightsizing the operating cost base. As Dargues, with the Life- of- Mine, now forecasting the end of operations in H1 2025, as Peter mentioned, that asset really becomes an important cash contributor for the remainder of its mine life, given those strong gold prices and the lower development requirements. Our plans are now focused on realizing that cash contribution through continued predictable performance and cost management. We'll be pleased to give you more detail on our operating plans for FY 2024 as part of our FY 2023 results announcement, which we plan for late August.
As mentioned, Hera has now transitioned to care and maintenance. Pleasingly, we did recover about 540 ounces from the final cleanup of the plant. The Hera operating cash flow was modest this quarter, obviously. It was impacted by some revenue adjustments from prior shipments and the final costs for the operation through March. We incurred a AUD 4.8 million cost for care and maintenance transition this quarter. This was in line with our plan. It did include just under AUD 2 million for redundancies paid to staff. The other one-off costs relate to demobilization of contractors and service providers, as Peter mentioned. It does include the commencement of some of the ongoing care and maintenance costs at that asset. Those ongoing costs are expected to be less than AUD 1 million per quarter going forward.
Hera was actually the main contributor of the unfavorable AUD 2.9 million working capital movement as well. Within that, there's about AUD 3.3 million in payments that we made to various suppliers. I do want to point out, though, that these movements are just the cash flow impact from the working capital unwinding, and they are not additional costs to what has been reported as operating cash flow for Hera previously. Growth, capital, exploration, and corporate costs were up slightly, driven by some higher corporate costs. As you will know, the growth capital will start to ramp up from this quarter with the recommencement of development at Federation. On the waterfall, the final movement relates to the refinance process, with a positive movement of AUD 1 million for the quarter.
With that, I'd just like to turn to slide 13 to take you through where we're at with the refinance process. The steps on this chart are in line with the refinance steps that I outlined on the call on 31 May. During the month of June, we did receive the proceeds from the institutional placement and entitlement offer of AUD 23.4 million. As Bryan said, we also repaid our term loan in full, which was AUD 8.6 million, and we fully cashed back our performance bond facility for another AUD 10.6 million. These were critical steps as it allowed our existing banks to release their security, which will now clear the path when we come to reach financial close of the new Trafigura facility.
We paid AUD 3.4 million in fees in June, and they relate to the institutional equity raise and part of the debt arranging fees. That was the positive AUD 1 million net movement during June. As you can see, there are some significant cash flows that will come in through July. In early July, we received the proceeds from the retail entitlement offer of AUD 16.4 million, and we also paid the balance of the fees relating to the retail offer and the debt arranging fees of another AUD 2.5 million. Those fees were all in line with the fees outlined in the equity raise presentation. Where we are now is that we're focusing on finalizing satisfaction of the conditions precedent for the Trafigura facilities, and that will allow us to draw down on the performance bond facility.
We expect to satisfy those CPs very shortly, within this month. Once we replace the performance bond, the existing bankers will then return the AUD 56.8 million they're holding as cash backing. Along with the cash on hand of AUD 38.9 million that we have, will take our cash on hand to around AUD 110 million. As I've outlined previously, we do have the loan note advance facility, and we'll keep that undrawn for now, but that facility provides further liquidity, up to around AUD 145 million. In summary, it has been a transformational quarter for Aurelia and for our balance sheet, with the balance sheet now set up to fully fund this next stage of growth. Thanks for your time. I'll hand the call back to Bryan.
Thanks very much, Martin. If I've just moved to the slide which describes the 100-day plan, really how are we unlocking future value for the company and for our shareholders? As described at the start of presentation, and as my colleagues have actually presented as well, we have a more stable platform in the last six months to build our full potential for our shareholders going forward. Using the feedback and information I've received, which I'm still gathering as I progress, a 100-day plan is very focused on five areas in the immediate period, not in any order of priority, but one really is, we need to continue to attract and retain and develop quality people as this is the key for our long, you know, long-term success.
We need to safely deliver a step change in our cost base and higher throughput to fill our mills. We can deliver higher shareholder value through all the commodity price cycles at Peak. Obviously, we're working through a plan to understand what's required to deliver lower half the cost of performance in the medium term. Number three, is really safely maximize value from Dargues' operation over the remaining life of the asset. Obviously, we're running the business very well there. Management's doing a great job at Dargues, and we just need to continue to make sure we maximize the value to the very end of that business and do it in a sustainable safety way.
Four, setting up Federation to success, to deliver safely on time and budget, but importantly, make sure we're set up for long-term success for Federation as well, so we can maximize the value of that full resource. Fifth, is to optimize our Cobar province and consolidate all of our organic options to fill the mills with good quality ore, which should deliver superior shareholder value and cash, including Safe and Great Cobar, which will form one of many of our future projects in our hub-and-spoke model in the province. We'll talk more about this in upcoming presentations and releases, against our sort of focus areas and against our business plan.
In summary, a very good finish to the, to the year in the last half and the last quarter for FY 2023, in both safety, operating production, balance sheet and cash, and setting up Federation Project, and importantly, setting ourselves up for exciting financial year in 2024. One of the most important is people are going home safe every day. As they come to work, they're going home better than they actually started the shift with. That's very important to us and something we very got much value as an organization. Really excited by the opportunity we have ahead of ourselves in the business, now I'll hand over for questions.
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 Will Charlston from Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, Bryan, team. Just a couple for probably yourself, Peter. At Peak, just wondering, how should we be thinking about mining rates between the copper and the lead zinc portions of the asset? Are they kinda gonna deplete in kinda lockstep or, you know, the lead zinc get depleted at a higher rate than the copper?
It will on that one. It depends on the timeframe we're looking at. Over the next couple of years, we'll continue to feed a mixture of lead, zinc ore, and copper ore sourced from the south mine and north mine. Beyond that, when Great Cobar is in production, we'll see the lead zinc contribution decline based on current outlook, but much higher copper volumes coming in. As Bryan mentioned before, that's just the baseline, and we're looking at other options in the district with our hub-and-spoke model to get the best mix of feed into those process plants.
Okay, no dramas. Maybe a question to Dargues. How should we be thinking about the grade profile there to the end of mine life? Is that gonna be broadly reflective of immediate history, or could there be some kind of reversion to the grades in the 2022 production target?
Well, I think probably the best response there will come out in coming weeks when we release our mineral resource and ore reserve update to the market and the production target. That'll give you a more quantitative feel, given the horizon of the mine life at Dargues and what those grades are gonna be. I will say, though, that this random area, we're back into in the upper levels of the mine. We're already seeing some grades from development there that are higher than the quarterly grades we've seen in the June quarter.
Okay, no dramas. Of course, for the update, I'll pass it on. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Caf Pietropaolo from Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead. Apologies. Your next question comes from Wolfgang Kissel, private investor. Please go ahead.
Hello, thank you very much for the presentation. I have a question to your zinc production, which you highlighted as very positive. As a side product of zinc production, we have gallium and germanium. Have you any plan to utilize your zinc production to produce also gallium and germanium, especially that these two rare earths are considered in the forefront of high tech production of hardware.
Wolfgang, it's Peter here. No, we don't. Our processing facilities at Peak are set up to recover a concentrate. We don't have the ability to extract any further metals on site apart from the gold, that we produce. The extraction of, any of those other elements really is something that happens at the smelting and refining end.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Caf Pietropaolo from Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
Cass, I'm a shareholder of the company and been there a long time. This question is directed to Bryan Quinn. Just previous managing directors have sort of run this company from a head office and not got their hands dirty and go to site and meet and build confidence within the employees. What's your plan, Bryan? Are you gonna go out to site? I know you've got managers on the ground and supervisors and all that, but how actively are you talking to employees to build up morale and just to put your presence there and get a bit of confidence for the employees to improve productivity?
Yeah, thanks. Thanks for the question. Look, so I've been with the company for fivw weeks, and I've been outsite for two of those weeks, two and a half of those weeks. Spent two weeks out to Cobar for one week each, also been to Dargues this week and previous weeks as well. My intention is to work with the teams, to support the teams. Obviously, I've got many stakeholders I need to work with, and the employees are definitely one of those stakeholders. Our role is to obviously hold them accountable, but also support them so we can maximize the value for the company.
In answer to your question, definitely we'll be around the sites, on the projects, in Brisbane, and with the stakeholders and investors, on a very sort of routine basis.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one. We'll pause for any further questions to register. Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Bryan Quinn for closing remarks.
Well, thanks, everyone, for joining the call today. We look forward to presenting the full year results in the coming weeks and look forward to further questions. Just want to reiterate, you know, I'm really, really happy with the quarter results and the last half results. The team's been able to work together with. We look forward to speaking to you very soon about the, the full year results and the guidance going forward. That's all. Thank you, everyone, for joining, and we'll speak soon.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.