Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Regis Resources Limited quarterly briefing. 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. Jim Beyer, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Ashley, and welcome everybody to the June quarter 2022 results. Joining me is Elena Macrides, our Co-Sec, Stuart Gula, our Chief Operating Officer, Tony Bevan, our interim CFO, and Ben Goldbloom, our investor relations executive. What I'd like to do slightly different to the way that we've handled these in the past, rather than run through the quarterly, we'll probably move through some of these, the results fairly quickly. Obviously at the end, we've got an opportunity for Q&A. Pardon me. There are a couple of things that I'd like to talk about in relation to our outlook and our assets at Tropicana and at Duketon. I would hope that everybody has a copy of the. There's a technical issue.
I just hope that I'll talk through the presentation, and I'll just make sure I try and remember to say what slide I'm referring to, what page I'm referring to. You'll find it helpful if you've got the presentation pack that we sent out with this, with the quarterly release sitting in front of you. Looking first at the June quarter results, we're very pleased, we were very pleased with it. It was a strong quarter. From a safety point of view, our lost time injury frequency rate was at 1.1, which is still sitting at about 40% below the gold industry average, which is great.
Of course, it's not good to have a rate at all, but it's pleasing to know that the effort that the team is doing is continuing to deliver improved results there on safety. Production-wise, it clearly was a strong quarter for us with a record quarter and also that flowing through to a record year. We came in on guidance, the restated guidance, certainly comfortably. As foreshadowed in our earlier release this month, the all-in sustaining cost came in slightly above the guidance at AUD 1,556 for the full year, which under the circumstances and the inflationary pressures we think is pretty reasonable. We did see some good positive impacts during the quarter as the high shear reactor was commissioned.
As we had mentioned, I think in mid-April, which was a little bit later than we were anticipating in our early plans from a few months beforehand, but COVID impacted on that. Certainly once that piece of equipment was commissioned and running, you could basically see a performance change overnight. It was a fantastic addition to our plant. Something that we'll be leveraging off going forward, as we allude to in our outlook. The mining performance continued to be strong at Duketon and delivered into our requirements.
We did see some impacts at Tropicana, which less so on this year's production performance, but certainly seen in some dragging of our growth capital costs and our delay in getting into Havana high grade by a few months this year at Tropicana. All in all, I think not a bad result considering the challenging COVID environment that we're in and the inflationary pressures that we saw. Through all of this, we managed to build our cash by AUD 64 million, up to AUD 231 million to the end of June. On slide four, we've got a waterfall chart showing the build-up and the expenditure, a bit more of the detail on how that cash build was made.
I won't go into that. It's pretty well laid out in the quarterly. Importantly now, moving on to slide five. Talking about our guidance for this year. You'll see our production guidance has been lifted from our actual last year. Our total guidance range is 450,000-500,000 ounces for the year. All-in sustaining cost is AUD 1,525-AUD 1,625. We're seeing it being reasonably steady compared to the year just gone. We see a lowering in growth slightly at Tropicana.
There is a bit of a carryover, as I mentioned before, where we're seeing the Havana cutback continue to be classified as growth capital until we get into the ore proper, which we're anticipating will be around about the middle of the year in late December, early January. That growth represents the remaining there for that six months. We also see some growth capital at Duketon as we bring our new deposit Ben Hur. You recall we purchased a couple of years ago. That's due to be set up and coming into production, which is a new great source of life.
The Garden Well South underground continues to be developed, and we're anticipating that will come into, we'll start seeing our first stoping later on in the December quarter. There's a bit of growth capital still associated with that as we complete the initial phase of that development. Also a little bit of ongoing at Rosemont Underground as part of our seeking out new and additional reserves outside the current life of mine plan. As I mentioned, the production is lifting certainly at Tropicana with and at Duketon, and I'll cover those in a little bit more detail as I come to those over the coming slides. Slide six is really a useful investment highlight.
I'll talk through these in a moment, but you know, you can see we have a strong financial position. As I mentioned, AUD 231 million in cash and gold on hand for net, with a net debt of just under AUD 70 million dollars. Looking a little bit closer at some of the other areas, if you move on to slide seven. Our ESG is certainly continuing to improve. I've discussed safety. Our female employees sits above industry average, and in the total employment numbers in our workforce, you can see the other statistics there for gender diversity across our business. On the environmental stewardship front, our performance continues to be strong there. Of interest, on both, at both Tropicana and Duketon.
We've had some projects and studies underway to look at renewable energy sources to, well, certainly at the moment with the current diesel price, to reduce our costs at Duketon, where we use all our power comes from diesel. We're looking at a solar farm to certainly partially offset our emissions and our costs of diesel. At Tropicana, there's a project that's being assessed at the moment in the final stages that given its extensive life, and I think this is another reflection of how much confidence does sit in the life. There is a proposal being finalized at the moment to incorporate a solar farm and a wind farm to help supplement the power and reduce emissions there.
As I said, both of these projects are in the final stages of approval. Looking across to slide nine, I just wanna talk about now something that we haven't really done in the past, and that's give a little bit of an outlook on where we see our business growing. This is purely from an internal point of view. If we, you know, we want to grow our business, or more importantly, we want to increase our shareholder value. We wanna get the right balance between short and long-term value there. We see that though as we look internally, we have potential to continue to grow our business up to this 500, and we target this 500 to 500+ 500,000 ounces per annum production rate.
It's certainly a target that we believe we're capable of driving to. What are we doing? Well, we see a pathway that can get us to that target of 500 from internal sources using both some of our existing, what we call mining inventory, and also some mineral inventory. For these, for example, we see Ben Hur as an important part of helping us to lift our production, as well as Garden Well underground. We also have other potential opportunities which we're talking about. We haven't finalized them yet, but there's certainly more than glints in our eye, which is the Garden Well main area I'll discuss a little bit further on.
A new area, or it's actually a deposit that we're working and drilling on at the moment that doesn't sit in any formal inferred resource. Commonwealth, which is up feed potential for Duketon North, is certainly another one of these potential, although that's to be honest, the numbers aren't included in this growth outlook here. What I'm saying is that there's more potential than what we see just on these plans. What we're basically anticipating is that over the next two or three years, we'll run in this range of 450, and we've got the potential to run up to 500 thousand ounces.
Beyond FY 2025, there's a very strong case for us to be able to deliver +500,000 ounces per annum. You know, if we include the clearly the yet to be approved, but the McPhillamys project and with its production being a real step up in that production range. You know, it's a key area for us now. What we're doing is we're indicating that these are the things that we're driving at to increase our value and our value growth and production growth outlook in the over the next three-four years. We're basically building on our current reliable pillars of Duketon and Tropicana. Maybe just moving on to slide 11.
I'll talk a bit more about how that might look for both of those and why we are confident that there's growth potential. At Tropicana, just touching on the guidance for this year, it's 130,000-145,000 ounces. A lift on the year just gone, AUD 1,350-AUD 1,450 an ounce. We can see that Tropicana will increase up to this 150,000 ounces. This, as we've been talking for quite some time, 450,000-500,000 ounce range is well and truly within our grasp. As you can see, we're confident that we can deliver into this, that asset.
We'll be able to deliver in the circa 150,000 ounce range from FY 2024 onwards. Importantly, we also see growth capital starting to decrease. As I mentioned before, we still are doing work at the Havana cutback, but that growth capital expenditure will drop off at the end of this calendar year or thereabout, and then we'll move into all our costs being treated as sustaining there. We like the asset. We continue to love it. It's 10+ years, and it's a strong cash generator. The interesting thing that we're also the project that the site is undertaking, and it's just kicked it off, is this program called the Full Asset Potential, the FAP.
The Full Asset Potential is a review that's being driven across the Anglo group, across their sites. I think Tropicana is the second cab off the rank. We've been in on the briefing sessions and have discussed it with Bain, the group that are leading that project at Tropicana. It's really focused in a couple of areas, looking to understand all the bottlenecks, making sure that the best value has been identified in its medium term and its strategic extraction plans. It also looks to find opportunities for the more routine cost efficiencies and cost reductions. We're looking forward to that.
That's a program that's expected to take something of the order of about three months to work its way through. Then, of course, the execution of it will be something that'll be managed on an ongoing basis. Slide 12 is really where we can show that, like, why we've always felt that there's been great value at Tropicana. That slide shows a three day view looking down on Boston Shaker and Tropicana, and you can see the areas there where the red squares or red rectangles are around the next target areas.
This is where we start to see this rolling addition to the reserves as we go to areas where we've got plenty of sniffs, and it's clear that there's a mineral inventory there, by drilling it out in detail so that we can get that converted into inferred and indicated and ultimately converted across to reserves. These are some great opportunity now, and the plan is that these areas that are boxed in are the next immediate targets. In fact, I think you can see in Tropicana the development that's going in to give access over the top of that. The interesting piece that's been added into Tropicana just recently is this area called the, or this item called the Havana Link.
A scoping study was done looking underneath the existing Havana pit to see what the potential was for a new underground area, one that basically wasn't included in the plans. That identified that there was certainly scope for it, an opportunity, and the work is now in progress for a pre-feasibility study, a PFS to be done. As part of that exercise in building our confidence in the resource and reserve potential sitting underneath the existing bottom design of Havana pit, there's an access development that will link, do two things. It will link into the Havana pit, which will provide material improvements for the Tropicana underground just by improving its ventilation.
Also, there's a drive that will head across to the area underneath Havana, where we'll be able to drill out and do some more confirmation drilling underneath that area that's being focused on. As well, it provides clarity that there's mineralization sitting between Tropicana and Havana, and it'll be doing some exploration drilling, looking to see what potential can be brought into our production plans as well. We think that's a great addition to the life extension story that doesn't just exist at Boston Shaker underground and Tropicana, but now there's a new potential area that's clearly opening up.
Slide 13 is one that really just emphasizes or illustrates in a different way how we think that even that red boxed area on the previous slide that we showed you, there's more areas sitting further down. As you can see on Slide 13, if you look on the diagram on the right, there is a hole at 320-odd meters below or down plunge of the inferred material, giving us confidence that that mineralization clearly has the potential to carry on, and you know, there's no end in sight at the moment. We think that there's plenty of life potential in these two and potentially three underground areas. Moving on to what's going on at Duketon on Slide 15.
The production guidance for the year, 320-355, and the all-in sustaining costs of AUD 1,550-AUD 1,650. We see growth CapEx is I think down a little bit on prior year, but we certainly see that starting to decrease from FY 2024 onwards as we'll have brought Ben Hur online and Garden Well and the two key areas that are drawing capital. You know, there's some on that page, there are some other aspects of how we see production being sourced from.
You know, for example, you can see that by the time we run out to FY 2024, both Garden Well and Rosemont underground represent quite a significant proportion of production coming out of Duketon at 40%. We're looking forward to having Garden Well South come in, as I mentioned before, later on this financial year. On the open pit front, the key sources of ore continue to be from Garden Well, Tooheys Well, and as I mentioned, Ben Hur, and a number of other minor satellites. More broadly, I think the way we're still looking and our confidence is quite strong now, as reflected in our outlook beyond this year.
We think that Duketon, certainly, at least for the next three years or so, is capable of sitting in this, what we've thought has been the sweet zone of, you know, 320-350,000 ounces of gold per annum. That's based on the material that we have on hand, you know. We do believe that there is more potential, and we're chasing that. I just wanna show you a couple of examples of where that sits over the next couple of slides. If you move on to slide 16. Pardon me. This is where we've got two areas that are highlighted, not included in our plans, but have got great potential.
If we look at Garden Well, and we have spoken, and you'll see in the quarterly that we refer to this, and we've been talking about the study that was being done. We'd identified an area sitting underneath the Garden Well main pit, where we could justify putting in a decline from the south and accessing that gold and then looking to see what we could find from there. As part of that review process, we've actually identified this area has actually got quite a lot more potential than we thought. In particular, that gray zone that sits between the south and the main is, while in this, it's shown as being almost barren based on its color.
We've gone through the process of evaluation, we've pulled a lot of old information. It's been quite a particularly tricky area to drill and get access to, because sitting over the top of it in the zone where we would drill it from are a whole bunch of stockpiles, which makes it extremely expensive and very difficult to drill out. Through looking at some of the old data and projecting information from the pits that we had, we've recognized that actually the potential exists in between that corridor, if you like, between the south and the main.
We've made an assessment and a decision to do rather than run the risk of compromising the effectiveness of that drive by focusing on the small block of exploitable material that we know exists underneath Garden Well Main, we're going to approach this as a decline that's that is set more for exploration to give us the so that we get. We don't put any development in anywhere that potentially compromises our extraction, but also gives us the best chance to be able to identify all of the material that sits between south and main, as well as getting access into the main and below the area where we were originally targeting.
Of course, the benefit of that is that we may even have potential for apart from putting in a plan that's not compromised by existing development, but also, perhaps, get some earlier potential production out of that area that's considered previously to be a bit more barren. That's a great area that's got potential to add to our existing plan. Rosemont, which is the diagram on the right on that slide 16, has an area as well, which we've been drilling out underneath what's called Rosemont South Underground.
Pleased to say that that's starting to look quite prospective, and we'll also be putting it's a lot less, but some development out to that, to be able to drill that out, and we don't have that in our plans at the moment. A little bit of pleasing news as well. We're starting to see, as we're getting further into Rosemont Central, that the grades there and the tonnages are actually improving from as we go down with depth and also get a better understanding of the structure and the material that bears is carrying the gold grade.
We're seeing some improvements there as well, in an area that we thought was sort of Moolart was the juicy bit and central was okay, and south was sort of modest grade. We're actually seeing both south and central lift in its performance a little bit as we get a better understanding of the ore bodies there and how to exploit them properly, which is great news. Slide 17 shows a little bit more of life extensions that we're chasing. You know, Ben Hur is probably sitting at 100,000 ounces, but we're seeing this drilling underneath it that's giving us the potential to add some more life to it. You know, we are seeing that around which doesn't give us.
It's not a major step change in life, but it certainly gives us the potential to add, you know, another year here, another six months there, which all adds up in value to our plan. Look, that's just moving fairly quickly over Duketon, but giving you a bit more color on what we're seeing as being near-term opportunities to add some life both from our open pits and our undergrounds. On McPhillamys on slide 19, look, you know, that's continues to be the slow burn. It's not a no burn. We are certainly making negotiations and discussions with DPI Water have been continuing.
The SPAL is certainly a specific purpose access license out there for us to be able to utilize once the license conditions are finalized with Water. We are progressing there, and we are hoping that we're gonna see something more positive than and some real output there certainly during this second half of the year, hopefully this quarter, but certainly before Christmas. Moving on to slide 20, which I think a few people will have seen before. This, we just touch on this to highlight and make sure people understand what we're trying to highlight here. This slide is about the benefits of time and the benefits of focus on exploration. You can see that some of the greenstone belts have been very well endowed with gold.
Then there's the smaller ones that's sitting more on the left-hand side of that chart. The key reason that we see for that is that if you've been exploring long enough and looking hard enough, you find gold on the greenstone belts in WA, as reflected by the time that those big belts have been known about. The Duketon Belt and the Albany-Fraser are relatively younglings in this process. Certainly, not explored to the extent and the detail of some of the bigger belts.
We just see that it's not the sole reason, but we see that as part of the simple reason why we're confident that there's plenty to be found on our belt, which of course we hold, you know, circa 90% of that ground. Just to show you on slide 21, what it is that makes us interested, and you know, we've had the ground now for a while. We've been putting quite a bit of focus onto what the, you know, the real basic elements of exploration. We think we're starting to see some glimpses of what that's going to provide to us in the future.
Sitting between the Rosemont open pit or the Rosemont Mill and the Baneygo pits is this area called the Rosemont South Trend. On it, we've been doing some drilling and getting some very encouraging results. Sitting at an asset now called Maverick is this deposit. No, it's not a deposit, but it's an intercept. The hole was drilled for about 150 m, and the last 10 m of the hole, we hit 10 m at 110 g a ton. Now, the reason that the hole pulled up in mineralization was because we hit water, and with the type of drilling that we were doing at that stage, we couldn't continue.
We're back obviously and doing more drilling there, and we've drilled another hole 100 m further south of that. You know, the ground is looking particularly interesting to us, and we're looking forward to getting those results from that. In fact, there's a whole series of holes around it. Now, obviously, we're putting a lot of effort running 100-m spacings around those wide-spaced holes. It's a particularly interesting area for us, as you could imagine, with those types of grades that you know, 10 m at 110, including 4 at 274 g a ton, and then further up the hole, another 8 m at 1.2.
Further south, probably, I think it's about 3 or 4, 5 km, we had another hole bit closer to the surface, 40 m below surface, 12 m at 6 g a ton. I'm pretty sure we all look at those and think, you know, if we're a junior, they would be some pretty spectacular results. We're very encouraged by them. Obviously, it forms part of our large portfolio, but we're putting a lot of focus on those now. We've gone back, and the team are putting a lot of effort into that. As those results start to come through, we'll make sure that we keep the market informed.
Rounding off at slide 22, you know, I've talked through the performance of last year, given the guidance for FY 2023, and hopefully given a little bit more insight into how we see our existing assets being pulled together and how we see that sort of forming an important part of our growth outlook and our efforts in looking to improve and increase the value of our shareholder value. We've got a strong financial platform, as I said. We generate strong operating cash flows, as you can see from past quarters, past periods. We've got a solid long life reserve, certainly sitting in assets like McPhillamys and at Tropicana and looking to build our growth profile off those reserves.
We're in a great location in tier one in Australia. Building our ESG credentials, and looking certainly forward to some of the projects that'll help both reduce our emissions, but also reduce our costs and reliance on diesel, a key factor at the moment. We are returning, and we see our plans are coming back to where we, you know, our June quarter was one where we delivered on what we said we were gonna do, notwithstanding the impacts of COVID all around us. At Duketon, we were pleased to see that. As I said, I just finished talking through the, our position on the Greenstone Belt at Duketon is very exciting. While it's early days, we think we're starting to see some glimpses of what the future might look like.
Look, I might, I'll cut there and I'll hand it back to you, Ashley, and open it up to Q&A.
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 speaker phone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from David Coates with Bell Potter Securities. Please go ahead.
Thanks so much. Thanks Jim for that presentation, and congratulations on the very strong June quarter. I've got a few questions about your growth outlook, but just before that, on the June quarter, you know, the all-in sustaining costs presumably benefited from that strong production performance. But can you give us a bit of a guide to what sort of underlying unit costs inflation is in sort of AUD per tonne mining and processing, and how that's looking into FY 2023?
Sorry. What underlying what?
Like your cost inflation on your like sort of your unit mining and processing costs. You know, the all-in sustaining costs were sort of covered, you know, benefited from the high gold production. In terms of, you know.
Oh, okay.
Your AUD per tonne mining and processing. What sort of inflation are you seeing there, and how is that sort of carrying over into FY 2023?
All right. I'll do my best to answer that question. Well, not clearly, but I'd say our costs for last year for FY 2022 were almost a cost of two halves. You know, the big driver of our costs and largest was fuel. You know, I think we averaged through the year about it might have been about AUD 1.05 or AUD 1.10 for FY 2022. You know, it was probably AUD 0.85-AUD 0.90 in the first half, and I think we ended the year at about AUD 1.70, and we've carried that forward, and that is.
You know, when you're using just at Duketon alone, it doesn't have quite the same impact as Tropicana because power runs off gas. At Duketon alone, we were using 110 million liters last year. That'll drop a little bit this year 'cause we come off our physicals. You know, that has a pretty significant impact on our costs, and we're assuming in our AISC that of those guidance numbers, that our fuel will continue at about AUD 1.70 for the next quarter or so, and then will drop down to AUD 1.40 after that. You know, we see, you know, that's probably the single largest impact on our AISC.
We saw and see other elements across everything from grinding media to input chemicals like cyanide and the like. You know, that fuel is the biggest. The other thing, probably less inflationary and more just performance-wise, COVID and labor availability has impacted on some of our open pits. The MACA team at site did a pretty good job of being able to manage personnel, and we were able to not just deliver into our physicals at Duketon to deliver this year's performance, but also set. Sorry, last year's performance, but set this year's up. The challenges at Tropicana were a little bit more substantial. As a result, not all of the material that's you know, they're probably down on physicals by maybe 15% or 20%.
That's one of the reasons why we see great capital flowing into this current year because it just couldn't get done. They didn't have the capacity, and obviously that has an impact with fixed and variable. You know, without sort of and not really in a position to go through and break down every single cost. Salaries, of course, are the other ones that we're seeing where we you know generally you know increases of easily 5%-6% on the salary front as well are putting a steady pressure on it.
The thing that really can impact on your unit cost more, I think more than the impact of salary alone is, you know, from an underground perspective, if you don't have the labor, don't have the people doing the job, you can't move the material, you can't get the ounces, and that really pushes your all-in sustaining costs up.
Right. Thanks, Jim. Just on the focus on the presentation here on growth and outlook, you know, you've highlighted a number of areas for, you know, resource and reserve growth. But overall at the moment with the last resource updates, you know, it was pretty steady, and there's, you know, you could sort of argue there's quite a lot of resource-to-reserve conversion to happen, to fill out those mine lives. When should we sort of be expecting to see that reserve growth start to come into the reserve and resource updates?
Yeah. Well, the pleasing thing about the for a start on the reserves and the resource update that we've already put out a few months ago was the fact that Rosemont underground has moved into the phase of being able to replace depletion. We don't expect to see any major doubling or tripling of that now. We just expect to see that on a rolling basis, and I think Garden Well will enter that phase over the coming 12 months as well.
You know, you basically, once you get underground, you get the right platforms, and you can start to drill more material further down plunge with an accuracy and confidence to bring them into reserves. I think, from the surface point of view, you know, the Benhur material, any additions that we see from that drilling. Unless that's spectacular, we won't be doing anything additional with that until the reserves and resource update. Certainly, as I mentioned, there's some potential deposits that we're working on at the moment that we think are sitting in. They're not currently in our plans here, but you know, there's one or two.
There's one called Commonwealth, which doesn't have any formal resources on it, but you know, we're quite confident that that's an area that's got the potential to add more life to more high-grade feed and life to Moolart Well. I think once we finish that work, we'll be talking about that when it's ready, and we won't be waiting until the reserve statement because that you know, at the moment, our plans and our reserves at our direct feed at Moolart starts to run out in you know, probably the first third of next financial year, so probably whatever that would be, 16, 18 months away. You know, we think that that's got the potential to add to extend the period of high-grade feed.
Once we've got that work done and we're satisfied with it from a JORC perspective and from our own risk category perspective, then we'll come out with that. We won't wait for that type of anything substantial. We'll come out when we're ready. Otherwise, it'll be incremental growth that gets reported in the R&R update.
All right. Thanks, Jim. That's it from me for now. Thanks.
Thanks, David.
Your next question comes from Alex Barclay with RBC. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi, Jim. I was just asking a bit more about the guidance you've got at Duketon and if there's any additional information you can kinda give around the split with Duketon North and Duketon South going into next year. Duketon North obviously finished the year with costs a little bit higher. Is that something we should maybe expect in the next year and Duketon South maybe a bit lower with the increased underground feed?
No. I mean, we certainly did finish the quarter at Moolart with, as I think it was about 2,500 AUD all-in sustaining costs, which was, you know, pretty damn high. There were some unique things that were driving that, which was one-off. We're expecting that to settle back down to levels, you know, well below 2,500 AUD. That's, as I said, just an anomaly. We had to get another contractor in to do some road haulage, for example, which was particularly expensive, and we'll be backing off from that. Look, I haven't got, and we haven't given any more breakdown on that guidance by area.
We just view that as being all consolidated. I think you can certainly take away that we don't you know. I mean, if we were experiencing those ongoing costs at Moolart Well, you know, that's recreational mining. We wouldn't be heading down that path at all. We you know we'll run a site, and we'll run it because we know that it'll make profit and it'll make cash.
Yeah. Okay. Sure. And just looking a bit further ahead, you've given FY 2024, 2025 around a similar sort of guidance rate, and presumably there is more underground coming in. Just wondering what happens with Duketon North, given the reserve life was a little bit shorter. Are you at this stage planning any integration with the South via trucking or, you know, sort of coming into FY 2025, is there any broader regional plans that you're thinking about or is it still waiting for mine life extension at this stage?
What our current plans are at Duketon North, which is, you know, the feeding into the Moolart mill. Look, you know, as I was saying before, we've got pits there in existing reserves that will run out, as I said, probably about four months or so into FY 2024. After that, we've got at least another two years thereabout of low-grade stockpiles. About two years, isn't it? Thereabout low-grade stockpiles that, while we, you know, if we were running with that, we'd certainly anticipate lower production. We factor that into these outlooks, by the way. But what we also would see, 'cause it's basically from a cash point of view, it's free issue. It is still good cash generating, just not quite as many ounces.
What we're definitely looking at, and this is where we've got a number of opportunities that don't currently sit in reserves, but we, you know, we're quite confident, that we're gonna have, and as I mentioned before, Commonwealth is one. There's a, I think in the appendix, there's a plan view of the holes and the drilling that we're doing there. That, you know, that's an area that's got the potential to mean that we, you know, while we're still doing the numbers on it could be anything from, you know, another year to a year and a half of high-grade feed production sitting in the Moolart.
I think in the long term, you know, our expectation is, we, you know, we've also got the Gloucester underground, which is extremely complex. It's perplexed us, and we're trying to work out the geology for that. That also has the potential to be another feed there, but it doesn't, again, doesn't sit in reserves or in resources for that matter at the moment. Long term, what would we do? Well, long term, I'd turn around and say our exploration guys are looking for opportunities there to be able to keep it running. I suspect that, if we didn't, we would continue to look at are there any satellite opportunities that we integrate?
You know, I think ultimately, like all mines do, if you run out of ore, you wind it up. We certainly don't have that on our agenda. We see enough interesting and exploration snips and also mineralized inventory that we can get into potential resource-reserves that we're working on at the moment to give us a bit more than that three or four year mine life, mill life that we have there.
Yeah. Okay. Thanks. That's very good color on that one. Just a last quick one from me. You flagged a major mill shut at Garden Well in the September quarter. Did you know sort of the impact or how many days out it might be there?
Yeah, it's finished now. It was a five-day shut. It was probably the biggest shut that I think we'd had on site. Pleased to say that it came off without an injury, which is always very pleasing because these things are under a lot of pressure. But it actually involved a significant power upgrade that was required because of the age and the quality of that infrastructure that was there over the years. It also involved a pretty significant move that was required of the tailings system that had basically got to the point where it was no longer fit for purpose, and we had to undertake some pretty significant works around that, along with the other usual suite of things that occurred through mill relines and the like.
That, that's come out, and we're up and running again now. Does it have an impact on this month's production? Yeah, you can't pull five days out without it impacting. You know, that's all factored into our guidance. You know, we believe that we've still got two and a half months there really, or, well, maybe less than that now, a bit over two months to continue to run at Garden Well, and there's nothing to suggest we won't be able to meet what would meet our requirements for the quarter. It was all part of the plan. It wasn't unplanned.
Yeah. Great. That's all from me. Thanks very much.
Thanks, Alex.
Your next question comes from Andrew Bowler with Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Good day. I know you alluded to this before about elevated diesel pricing today. Just wondering if Regis has ever engaged in any diesel hedging and, you know, what that sort of position looks like if you've currently got hedges outstanding.
Yeah. I think a number of years ago, there was a period, a few. I'm not quite sure. I can't remember exactly what year it was. I think Regis did sort of jag a pretty good bit of hedging. We haven't done any in the last four or five years. I mean, we continue to look at that. We did look at that last year and, you know, hindsight is the most accurate management tool known to man. The reality is, though, you can't hedge diesel. You can hedge large volumes of oil, but the diesel prices are being driven in part by oil price, but more significantly by refinery margins, given the limited refinery capacity.
The short answer to your question is we haven't undertaken it. We are looking at it, and we're looking for options and opportunities to be able to do that. You know, I guess at the moment, we're trying to work out, like everybody else, whether when the softening starts.
Thanks for that. I might have missed this before, but just timing on those studies for renewable energy in the WA businesses. You know, is that something that the Regis could potentially carry the CapEx for, or is that more likely to be a third party who sort of supplies?
Well, first, answer your first question, timing-wise, I would be anticipating well and truly in this first half of the financial year, barring anything unforeseen at this point. The way it's being funded is basically, well, there's a few clearances and a few basic initial, you know, very low levels of prep work that we do for the Duketon proposal. Then it's a supplier installs, you know, KPS are our diesel gen suppliers. The power supplier for renewables would set up, and basically that would be a cost recovery over the period that we've got it in place.
I think the similar arrangement is being considered for Tropicana, though with a little bit of initial upfront CapEx to get it going, but nothing substantial.
No worries. Last one from me. Is sort of renewable energy something that you'd be looking at at McPhillamy, just given, you know, elevated East Coast power prices at the moment? Are you just sort of looking to get that approved and then, you know, that's something you could add on later?
Well, it's certainly something that we would be doing from two parts, in part to make sure that we've got the most cost effective power that we can pull in. Because the advantage of being in New South Wales is it's got quite a large grid and a number of options that we can tap into. You know, there's big power running about how far away is it? About 30 K's or something, isn't it, their big power line, which is connected into the network. So we can access those renewable energies, which has the advantage of potentially lower cost.
Although I think cost of renewables in those big grids are, it's not completely clear whether it reduces your cost, but it certainly reduces your emissions and certainly would in the event of some cost on emissions was put in place. We do expect to do that, but we haven't factored that. We don't factor that in on the assumption of any material savings in our evaluation when the time comes to make that call.
No, that's all from me. Thanks very much, Jim.
Thanks, Andrew.
Your next question comes from Alexander Papazov with Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi, Jim and team. On guidance for Tropicana next year, are you able to give any more color on the planned total open pit ore movements and grade expectations?
Look, I don't have the total movements sitting in front of me. What I can say is that I mean, basically at Tropicana, once Havana comes in, you'll see that the grade starts to lift up. I mean, the Havana grades are sitting at 1.5 g a ton. So as that feed starts to kick in, because at the moment the feed comes into the mills from the underground, primarily Boston Shaker, a little bit from Tropicana, and Tropicana will grow in the year. It comes from the Boston Shaker open pit, which will be finished in the first half of our financial year. We will see Tropicana.
Sorry, we'll see higher ounces and feed into the mill start to lift significantly. Pardon me. We never produce enough at this stage in the plans. Tropicana does not produce enough direct feed or to completely replace the use of and the drawdown of the lower grade stockpiles that it's got. It certainly sees an increase, and that's why we're seeing, you know, over the next this coming year, we see, you know, easily a 10%-15% increase in production. That's all driven by that higher grade offsetting more of the low grade stockpiles.
Yep. Okay. On McPhillamys, can you expand on the note about purchasing a rural property to advance the project development?
Yeah. Sure. There's as part of some of the infrastructure corridor that we need to put in for the project. In one area, we've decided to ensure that we can get the right and maintain the right line. We've purchased a property that we were previously negotiating an easement on. We've purchased that property to ensure the access to that easement. Our expectation is that we won't hold on to that property for very long. We'll ensure that the easement is secured, and then we'll look to put that property back into the market. We are in the meantime, you know, continuing to run it as a farm because that's what it is, decent size.
It's a substantial amount of money, but we see it as being rotating in and out over the medium term. We, you know, already hold a substantial amount of property in that part of the world, and we don't wanna particularly own too much more. It is something that we saw as being the best strategy to be able to ensure that we secured a line for our infrastructure, and infrastructure meaning power, that if we didn't get access to that line for, you know, a change in owner, for example, then the cost to us would have been quite significantly more to reroute it. Does that make sense?
Okay. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Very clear. Final question is, do you have any expectations for D&A for FY 2023?
Expectations for D&A for FY 2023? Probably, you know, we report on that in our table. I don't think we're gonna see anything too significantly different from that. We'll give an indication of. Like, our expectations are it will be similar rates to the last 12 months. We're not anticipating any major change there. You know where that is in our tables that we release.
Yep. Yep. Right. That's it for me. Thanks.
Thanks, Alex.
Your next question comes from Patrick Collier with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Hi, Jim. Just a very quick one. Looking at the Duketon outlook in the presentation, you've got Duketon North at 2-2.5 million tons. Just comparing that to, you know, around the 3 million tons that it's done over the last at least year or so, are you able to give any detail on what's driving that step down?
Sorry, I missed what you were saying there. The what at Duketon?
The Duketon North mill throughput. In the outlook slide, it's got 2-2.5 million tons running.
Yeah.
Just comparing that to what's been achieved recently.
Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Like, the Duketon, the Moolart Mill is very susceptible, as most mills are, to feed type. When we see the high rates that we've experienced, it's usually the result of, you know, a lot of oxide, a lot of soft material, you can get high throughputs. As we start to get a little bit deeper in some of our pits, you know, things like Gloucester and the like, we move into more fresher rock, and the mill rate starts to drop because you just can't get the same throughput through.
Okay. Sure. No, that's all for me. Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Beyer for closing remarks.
All right. Thanks, Ashley. Thanks everyone for joining us. As always, if you've got any follow-up questions, please give myself or Ben a call, and we'll do what we can to help out. Thanks for joining us and have a good day.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.