Good day, ladies and gentlemen. This is Terry Holohan, the CEO and MD of Resolute Mining. I am joined today by Chris Eger, our CFO, and we will take you through our Q3 '24 activities, which you should be able to see on the webcast. If I jump forward, page two, that does have our guidance on there, which we have not, at this stage, changed. Then to slide three, just gives you the overview of the company. Remember, we are a multi-asset gold producer. We are operating in West Africa, and we're in the organic growth phase at this point in time. We have a mine in Mali, the Syama Gold Mine, and the Mako Gold Mine in Senegal, and the exploration now we've extended.
Last quarter, you remember I said I'm hoping to put a fourth flag on the presentation, and you can see the Côte d'Ivoire is now on there. So we're really happy to say we're expanding now organically on the exploration side. We are listed on the ASX and the LSE, and we've raised to now AUD 1.2 billion U.S. market cap recently, and we have. If I go into a little bit of detail on the three main areas. Syama, remember, it's got 10 million ounces of gold in the ground. Majority, by far, the majority of that is sulphide. We have ore reserves of four million ounces there.
We have an oxide plant at 1.6 million tons, which we're presently converting to a sulphide plant, and we have an existing sulphide plant, which we've perfected over the last two and a half years and is performing exceptionally well at 2.4 million tons per annum. We're expecting to produce somewhere between 2.5 and 2.15, I would suggest towards the higher end of the scale there, at round about AUD 1,500 an ounce this year from Syama, which is a lot better than the last couple of years. Mako, if you remember, that is coming to the end of its life. We've got about 12 months of mining left. We've got a mineral resource of 0.9 million ounces or reserves of 0.4. Oxide plant capacity, 2.1.
We put out guidance saying 140-150 thousand ounces. I'll come back to that in a moment, but our costs are definitely gonna remain somewhere between AUD 1,100 and AUD 1,200 per ounce. As I mentioned on exploration, now we are exploring on four fronts quite aggressively. We'll probably spend about AUD 20 million this year on that. Mali, greatly underexplored across our 85 km of greenstone belt. Senegal, we've made some significant progress with Tomboronkoto, which we'll go into shortly, which is a potential extension of the Mako mine. Guinea, we put out our first initial mineral resource recently. The Ivory Coast, I hinted at that last time, we've signed a joint venture, and we're expecting to start drilling in early 2025.
And then just a quick reminder that we still do have a stake in the Loncor project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has just recently started drilling again. So turning to slide four, if you look at the operations, we produced 85,000 ounces, a little bit lower than the previous quarter. As you know, it's the rainy season in West Africa. We expect it to be slightly lower. We did have a little bit more rain impact at Mako, which we'll go into a little bit later, which has significantly impacted the operation there. And nowadays, now we're expecting to produce about a 130,000 ounces from Mako this year. As a result of this slightly lower than we expected production, our AISC went up to AUD 1,452.
Some of that is due to the Mako lower production, but also the sliding scale, higher royalties in Mali, where the gold price went significantly above AUD 2,500 per ounce. As a result of the numbers to date on the three quarters, we are expecting our AISC to be at the upper end of the guidance, mainly as a result of the higher royalty rates that we're experiencing because of the high gold price. If you look at cash flow, we think this is a big win. We're starting to generate significant amounts of cash now. Year-to-date, AUD 188 million. Last two quarters have been particularly good because we were unhedged, and going forward, we're unhedged, and some of the capital was not spent this year.
That doesn't mean to say we are not doing the jobs. We're getting the work done. That's the difference between the committed money and the actual spent money. That is the difference, so some of those monies are getting pushed forward to next year. It is worth mentioning on cash flow. We are in discussions with both governments in West Africa. We're going through audits on the historic operations, and there could be some adjustments later on, and Chris will actually talk to that a little bit later in his section. Okay, on the exploration front, we added significantly to the Tomboronkoto ounces and to the Mansala Project in Guinea, extra 900,000 ounces on the books over the last two quarters.
This is quite a significant step, especially on the Tomboronkoto side, now where we had 85% conversion of our inferred to indicated over this last quarter. As I mentioned, this La Debo Gold Project, we're quite excited about this. This has essentially walk-up and drill targets, given that it has an NI 43-101 inferred resource of about 400,000 ounces. This is a project that we tried to get involved in three or four years ago, but we didn't have the wherewithal at the time to take it on. In terms of balance sheet, we think it's extremely positive. We added almost AUD 50 million to net cash, and that was helped by receiving the second tranche from Ravenswood, as we expected.
We've also secured an external debt facility with Nedbank and Citibank for M&A projects, but at this stage, we don't have any use of that as yet, and Chris will go into that again in a little bit more detail. In terms of ESG, we believe we're still hitting our targets there. We're still LTI-free, and that represents Syama, five and a half years, Mako, three and a half years. These are significant timeframes now to be LTI-free. Also, with the focus on safety, our injury frequency rate has significantly dropped over this quarter to 1.37 from 2.1, and that's against an industry average of about 2.6. As you know, we're doing lots of audits against the World Gold Council, Responsible Mining Principles, ISO, et cetera, and continuously improving our numbers or matrices on ESG.
Moving on to slide five. You've seen this slide before. We just need to update it now to add the Côte d'Ivoire. But the oxide plant is still on track for middle of next year to convert to sulphides. That, if you remember, will be replacing 1.3 grams per ton oxides with 2.6 grams per ton sulphides. That's going to have a significant boost to the operation over the next 30 years, we believe, given the size of the deposit there. And we're also looking at the Syama Phase Two growth, which is the original 400,000-ounce project that we were talking about from day one. We are presently in our budgeting phase as we speak at the moment, and we'll give a little bit more color on these over the next quarter.
So if I go into the operational overview, taking me to slide seven, let's just focus a bit on Syama. The Syama sulphide operation, we believe, is operating exceptionally well. We did have heavy rains in, as I mentioned, as the rest of Africa has suffered, especially Central and Northern Africa, has suffered recently with heavy rains. And if you look at the ore mined on the sulphide, you can see we had some stoppages there. We didn't mine as much tons there or the grade at 2.5 grams per ton. But if you remember in the last quarter, I did say we've stockpiled some high-grade materials for this situation, and we managed to treat 622,000 tons of 2.63 grams per ton material through the plant.
That was our target, to get it above 2.6 and to push those tonnage, tonnages. And as you'll see, we are systematically increasing the operation on the tonnages through the sulphide plant due to all the work we did previously, at the end of last year and early this year, on the crushing plant. So we're now starting to make those mills operate well. The oxide plant, we had a few problems, again, with the rain in the oxides, but we swung to a lot across the stockpiles, so therefore, the process grade is only one gram a ton there. However, I will mention that since the rains are stopping now in Syama, we're getting back into the higher-grade materials, and we should have a stronger quarter at the, in Q4 here, which will catch up a lot of this metal that we're presently behind.
As I mentioned, we've spent a little less capital, but we did spend about AUD 22.6 million in capital, a lot of that on the SSCP. Moving over to slide eight, if we talk about the oxide plant conversion, you can see the diagram there showing the infrastructure that we've put in place now. If you remember, I reported last quarter that we managed to finish all the concrete work before it started raining, and we haven't put all the high steel work in place while it was raining. So from a safety point of view, we've had no accidents or LTIs on those areas, and the project is progressing well. All the long lead items are now ordered, and we're waiting for those. The mill has virtually arrived now in various boxes, so we'll start assembling that in Q4.
As I mentioned, it, the project is on track to commission in mid-2025, when we're gonna see higher-grade sulphides replacing the lower-grade oxides. Moving on to slide nine, as I mentioned, Mako. During the month of September, we had a one-in-a-thousand-year rainstorm, which had a significant impact on our pit. If you remember, we're in the last two years of mining this pit, so we're down at the bottom. And we had what a one-in-a-thousand-year rainstorm means. We had about 250 odd millimeters of rain on a couple of days. But if you look at the graph on the left there, you can see that even though we haven't finished the year yet, we're well over the 1.1 meter of rain that we normally get in a year. In fact, over the month of September, we got 569 millimeters.
Now, mines of these types, you always design in for one-in-a-hundred-year. A one-in-a-thousand-year is exactly double what you actually have designed in for. So the two pumps that the contractor had to pump water out just could not cope. To get additional pumps normally takes you six months, but we managed to find pumps from other mines, and we managed to get those on site during September. So we believe, as we sit now, during October, we've recovered most of that position. And it's also worth noting that given that we'll be finishing mining in mid-next year, this will be the last rainy season this pit actually has to handle. But the big lesson here, not only for us, but the mining industry, is we need to focus on one-in-a-thousand-year rainstorms going forward, so we don't hit these issues again.
Moving to slide 10. If you remember last quarter, I said I expected to be putting two grams a ton through the mill, and you can see we didn't quite make that. And that was a combination of not being able to mine the bottoms of the pit there, which are the higher-grade sections. But also, we found that some of the material coming out of the sides of the pits was 15% lower in grade than we expected. And when I say expected, this compared to the resource model that we did in 2021 , our grade control is showing us about 15% lower. So as a result of this, we managed to use a lot of our stockpile material to put through the plant, so we didn't lose out on tonnage. We lost a bit on grade, but we didn't lose on recovery.
But obviously, we were slightly down on gold poured. Given the slightly lower grade material, and we're back in the bottom of the pit now, we are saying that we think we are going to this 15% lower grade could continue, so we're forecasting at this stage a lower than expected guidance for Mako. If you remember, we said we thought Mako could originally produce about 145,000 ounces. We're conservatively saying now 130,000 ounces. So if we add the 130,000 ounces to the Syama's 215,000, this takes us to our guidance level of 345,000. It is the lower end of the guidance level, but we think we're comfortable of meeting that at this stage.
Given the 145,000, we think that the, this will put a little bit of pressure on our costs. We think we'll be at the higher end of the costs, the AISC, and this is essentially 'cause of a new headwind there, which is the extra royalty that we're paying in Mali, given that our gold price now has increased above the AUD 2,500 an ounce. There is good news, however, still on the capital side. We think we're gonna be well under on our capital because of the deferral of capital for next year. So we think it's gonna be a good year all in and a good from a cash flow point of view. Moving on to slide 11, the exploration update. As I mentioned, this is getting very exciting now.
The Mali extension project, that is our number one exploration project, as you all know. The Mako pit, as I've mentioned, is finishing up in the middle of next year on the mining. We have two and a half years of stockpile, and the plan is to turn this Tomboronkoto Project into a mine. The challenge is obviously to turn that pit to account before we finish the stockpile, and I'm really excited about the progress we've made. We've declared a resource there of 571,000 ounces. This is a mine. If I look at the strip ratios there, they are low, less than three to one. It's reasonable grades.
The material is friable, so it doesn't need a lot of energy to break it down in the mill, and we've only drilled at this stage down to about a hundred and fifty meters depth. We know it's extending, and we're drilling it as we speak now to below 200 meters to actually increase this resource. We're bringing this project to a decision-making point, an investment decision, hopefully by Q1, because we are running the engineering in parallel with the drilling. We've actually started our geotech drilling already on this project. In Mali, we're still doing a lot of exploration there.
We're looking both for further oxide and for looking for upgrading a lot of our sulphides, and this all really to underpin the new phase two, the project that we've talked about, for 400,000 ounces, which I still believe is on the cards later on in this decade. Then at Guinea, exciting work there, found this resource of 343,000 ounces. We have stopped work there, really to focus on Tomboronkoto. However, we will be gearing up in the new year to extend that, and we believe that's a really exciting frontier for us to move into. Looking at slide 12, this is the Ivory Coast project, the La Debo Project. This is a private company. As I mentioned, we've always been very keen on this project, and we've managed to put a deal together. Very excited about this.
It's in the right part of the world. It's on the Birimian sediments, and they do have an inferred mineral resource of 400,000 ounces. They also have a lot of upside potential that we recognized several years ago, so we're very excited to be moving into this one next year. And at the next meeting, I will be reporting on the progress that we will be making on the Côte d'Ivoire. Thank you. And with that, I will hand over to Chris, who will take you through the financials.
Thank you, Terry. And now moving on to slide 14. Look, we're really excited about the operational performance of the business and thus the financial results of the company. For Q3, we sold 95,000 ounces of gold, an increase of 10,000 ounces versus what we actually produced. The reason we sold more gold than what we produced is because at the end of Q2, we were staying on about 10,000 ounces of stock, because in Q2, the quarter ended on a weekend, and therefore, we were not able to sell all the gold that we had made.
But more importantly, looking at the full year numbers, we think we're gonna produce and sell about 345,000 ounces of gold, which is at the very bottom end of the guidance, but we're still very pleased with this performance because the difference is really due to Mako as a result of the rains in Q3. When looking at our cost, AISC in Q3 was at AUD 1,452, an increase over Q2. But also, as Terry highlighted, a big driver is the increase in AISC as a result of the higher royalty rates that we're seeing in Mali as a result of the higher gold price.
But then when looking at the full year guidance, we're likely also to be at the very upper end of the guidance for AISC at around AUD 1,400, which is in line with expectations due to the higher royalty rates. When looking at CapEx for the quarter, we spent AUD 26.6 million, an increase over Q2. But again, when thinking about the full year numbers, we're likely to be at the very bottom end of the range at around AUD 115 million of total CapEx spend, or even AUD 110 million. On the exploration side of the equation, we spent a little bit less in Q3 versus Q2, AUD 6.3 million versus AUD 7.6 million. But we do expect on exploration spend will be AUD 20 million, then slightly higher than the guidance for the year.
So moving over to slide 15, we'd like to talk to you about some of the substantial Free Cash Flow generation of the business. Year-to-date, we've generated AUD 188 million of Free Cash Flow, of operating Free Cash Flow. This is a substantial increase versus last year, where at the same time, we had only generated AUD 105 million. This increase was driven predominantly by the gold price environment, but we are working hard to reduce our costs across the business. Notwithstanding today's environment, we are paying higher royalty rates as a result of the higher gold price environment. So if you look at the cash flow waterfall chart on the top right, moving from left to right, I spoke about the operating cash flows. As you can see, CapEx today is at AUD 71 million, a substantial increase over last year.
But again, this is a result of the increase in CapEx related to the expansion project at Syama. And as I mentioned before in the previous page, we do expect full year CapEx to be around AUD 110 million. Exploration, year-to-date, 16.2. But like I said, for the full year, we're expecting that number to be about AUD 20 million. On the working capital side of the equation, you can see a positive working capital number of AUD 16.5 million for the year-to-date number, and this reflects a lot of hard work that we've been putting through the business in reducing our inventory levels and increasing accounts payables to industry standards.
However, one very negative impact to the business, which is reflective in all of these numbers, relates to tax leakage that we were seeing across the company as a result of the increased fiscal pressures that we see, both unfortunately in Mali and in Senegal. Both countries are economically struggling and therefore have been slow in returning our VAT refunds, and we've seen increased numbers of tax audits across the board. When looking at banks and repayments of debts, and also receipt of payments for the Ravenswood sale, we've generated substantial cash across all these elements. So we paid back our financing facilities in Q1, and then we worked hard with EMR to get AUD 50 million into the business in order to settle the Ravenswood payments.
At this stage, when we look at our cash balance, we're sitting today at AUD 188 million of gross cash on our balance sheet. What does this all mean? When looking at the net cash progression on the bottom right, you can see that since the beginning of the year, the business has generated well over AUD 110 million of cash since the beginning of this year. Today, with our gross cash of AUD 188 million and our availability in our financing facilities, the company is sitting with excess liquidity of over AUD 250 million, which gets us very excited in being able to attract both organic and inorganic growth opportunities. With this, I'll hand it back over to Terry for some concluding remarks.
Thank you, Chris. In summary, I think this is gonna be a great year for us. We've had three and a half years of tough decision-making, and we've actually got through, and we're in a position where we can truly benefit now from the gold price. We are fully focused on the organic growth of this business, as we, as we've outlined here, and that's all about the Syama expansion, the Mako extension, and the increased jurisdictions for exploration. I certainly believe that we've got the team in place now that can deliver on all these major objectives for us. Thank you.
If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure your line is unmuted locally, as you will be advised when to ask your question. Our first question comes from the line of Justin Chan from SCP Resource Finance. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks very much for taking the Q&A, and congratulations on a good quarter. Just maybe one on Mako. For your... I guess, with the lower grades, how are you viewing that into, I guess, next year? Is your expectation for it to be kind of similar to this year, grade-wise, or at least your Q4 run rate, or kind of in that maybe 1.0, you know, 1.5-1.7 range, something like that?
Hi, Justin. Terry here. Yeah, at this stage, I mean-
Hi, Terry.
Good morning. I think you'd appreciate we're right at the bottom of the pit, and we'd love to get in there and do a whole bunch of grade control drilling just to get down and look at that, and unfortunately, we can't get in. We're just starting to mobilize now, given the waters are receding. There's not a lot of space in there, so we are drilling one and a half bench at a time with the grade control, 'cause you can push down a bit further, but we are reviewing that as we speak, and we'll put a bit more color on that as part of our budget process now. If you talk to the geologists, they still stand by the 2021 model. It was well done. It was 40 meters spacing across the ore body.
So they say, "Don't worry, it'll come back." But, we're engineers, and we're just a bit more cautious at this stage.
Got you. Very prudent. And then maybe on Syama and the expansion or the Phase One expansion, in terms of kind of seeing it in your numbers, do you expect material impact for next year? And when do you think we'll start to see it in terms of ton?
... I think you're gonna, you know, we, we're gonna start putting ore in, we're gonna start mining the ore, in the first half in sort of reasonable amounts, first half of the next year. When it comes on, my experience of bringing new mills in is it takes three months to ramp it up to sort of full production. You get up to 70% production pretty quickly. But I would say-
Mm-hmm.
- in Q3, you should see it ramping up, and then Q4, we'll actually see what it can do. As again-
Okay.
You know, we're on track with the project. We're quite excited the way it's going. Things are going to plan. We've got a great team on the ground there, and most of the equipment has arrived or are on the water. So I would suggest, again, as part of our budgeting process that we're involved in now, we'll put a bit more color on it over this quarter and early next year.
Gotcha. And just in terms of the numbers, I guess, will that express itself primarily in kind of more numbers out of the Syama sulphides in terms of tons or higher grade, or just trying to, you know, model that properly in terms of how it'll express itself?
Yeah. In my thinking, you know, the thing is, when you start a pit like this, it's a large pit, and, you know, it's part of a three million ounce ore body that we're attacking here. You're gonna. We know that in some areas it's over three gram a ton, fairly close to surface, but it's also close to surface, one and a half gram a ton. So we've got to model this very, very carefully. Some of it's oxide, so we'll put it to one side 'cause it's patchy. So I think, you know, it'll be a sort of a, an up and down start, but once it sort of gets into, nine months of operation, then you'll be able to see steady flow.
I think 2026 will be a fantastic year out of it, but it'll be an interesting and sort of bit of a stop-start operation for the second half of next year. But we will put some numbers out shortly. Yeah, I'm confident-
Okay.
that sulphides-wise, we should be able to take up, you know, from the 215 to sort of 240-250. So certainly by 2026, but it will be sort of a steady ramp up over the second half of next year.
Gotcha, and then just maybe one last one on just looking ahead, 'cause we're close to the end of the year now. For CapEx next year, I realize you haven't finished all your budgets or. But just to get a high-level sense. So 20 million comes over. Do you expect to be in around, like the 110 level for next year as well? Or, yeah, just wondering if that's the right range or maybe somewhere lower or even higher.
Morning, Justin, it's Chris here. No, we'll be, we should be lower.
Okay.
We should be sub-AUD 100, as I'm just sort of ballparking it with what we've done historically, because there's not a lot of CapEx at Mako, as you can imagine, with it being an open mine. But look, it's too early to tell, but we will be sub-AUD 100.
Okay. All right. Thanks, Chris. I really appreciate that.
Mm-hmm.
All right, thanks, guys. I'll free up the line. Thanks very much, and congratulations on all the cash flow.
Thanks, Justin.
The next question comes from the line of Reg Spencer from Canaccord. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, Terry and Chris. Just a follow-up question on the adverse tax challenges in Senegal and Mali. Just to clarify, that relates primarily and only to the issues with the VAT refunds, and there's nothing else that might be attached to proposed changes in mining codes or any fiscal changes?
Morning, Reg, or afternoon. It's Chris here. No, unfortunately, it's not just VAT. So we are getting, call it, having a timing impact on getting our VAT refunds, which is probably the bulk of the issues that we have. But look, in Senegal, for example, there's a new government that was put into place early this year. As typical, new governments will then start up a new phase of audits. So we've had a number of what I call tax audits on historical performance. This goes back to two thousand and seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, and through some of these audits, we've had to pay a number of additional monies to the governments, and so that is happening, which is pretty, pretty typical.
But like I said, you know, two-thirds of the issues are around VAT refunds, but we are getting an increased number of tax audits, which cover a whole host of topics in our business.
That's not expected to continue for, like, much longer, Chris? Is that a fair question? Obviously, once you go through the process of these audits and, for lack of a better term, square everything away with the Senegalese government, that's it. And are you able to tell me what the quantum of, you know, that might be?
Yeah, look, we would hope they would slow down, but, you know, it's very common in where we operate, that these happen every year with all mining operators. So it's a common occurrence, it's just we're seeing, call it, an increased number of audits versus what we typically see. So we, as we go through the audits, we learn, we develop relationships, we adjust. But look, a lot of times the rules are not written that specifically on purpose, and so there's a lot of interpretation and there's a lot of relationship building, but then when you get a whole host of new people that come into government, you have to restart that process.
Based off the history, we should expect to see things slowing down as we work through these audits, but I can't promise you that it's gonna come to a stop.
Okay, it's no problem. There does seem to be a bit of a wave going through West Africa of mining code changes and tax changes and settlements and things like that. It doesn't seem to be isolated to any particular country.
... Yeah, I think unfortunately, that's the case. We're seeing it across Africa, specifically in West Africa. And, yeah, it's unfortunately the environment that we're living in. As we're generating a lot more cash because of the gold price environment, one of the, I think, unfortunate byproducts of it is that, people are looking for possibly a bigger piece of the pie.
Yeah. No, that's fair. Last question for me, maybe one for Terry. Tomboronkoto, I note in your announcement of that maiden resource in September, you showed an aerial image overlaying the deposit. It looks like a village. So I presume that there will have to be some kind of relocation to take place there, and it sort of made me think about what the likely or possible timelines for development might be. If you've got what your... Sorry, what was that?
Sorry, yep. Reg, yes, there is-
Sorry. I'll, I'll keep going. Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Just a question around timelines for development, Terry. You know, given that you've got reasonably limited runway with stockpiles and in-pit ore at Mako, is there any risk that this thing can't be permitted, you know, relocation completed, and everything associated with opening that up in time? And would there be any risk of, you know, stoppage in order to allow that?
Reg, you know, there is a village there. We are working very, very closely with that village. 10% of the people do actually work on the mine, so they've got a vested interest. That's why they've allowed us to drill virtually in their backyards, right next to the houses there. We've got a good relationship with them. They're very enthusiastic. We've got local politicians, we've got politicians in Dakar, very excited about it. Everybody sees the need for it in the country. I think on permitting, as you know, in Africa, you tend to get permits very quickly. The government has gone into cabinet elections now for four weeks, so while we were looking to post our ESIA in December, I would suggest it'll now be Q1.
So we think that, you know, there could be delays, more because it's a change in government than anything else. We do have very good relations with the environmental department there. But moving a village is always quite tricky. I've done three of those and, you know, we've hired the people that were involved with the previous village removal in the country. We've got a high road and low road there, but I would suggest that we've got two and a half years of stockpile. It will be moved in that timeframe. And there is a potential chance of starting in one side of it where we can actually. Because we don't have to blast, we can actually, and it's friable material, we can actually free dig some of it.
So we think we've got options, but we're trying to pull it all together as we speak. The engineers are working flat out on it as we speak there. We all went to. I took the whole board to have a look at it last weekend, and they got a great view of it. We also looked at the other operation, Bantaco, and it's early days there, but we believe that that could come in to fill a gap. We think ultimately, my personal view is that I think Bantaco is possibly the larger pit, but needs a lot more work. But if we could delineate 200,000 ounces that quickly, where there's no village, then we could sort of lift that and put it in the gap if there's a gap going to be there.
So we've got plenty of options. As I've said, the Tombo is a mine, and you can see that it's going to happen. We want to have that other option, Bantaco, but we're just a bit behind on the drilling at the moment for lots of reasons, because of all the focus on Tombo. But certainly, I don't think the mill will stop. I think that's the key thing. The mill will keep going. But the, you know, the mining will have a gap. And that's not always a bad thing, you know. It gives you an option to renegotiate your rates, et cetera. If that makes sense.
Excellent. That's fabulous. Thank you, very, very helpful.
Thank you.
Before we take our next question, as a reminder, please press star one if you would like to ask a question. And our next question, it comes from the line of Cody Hayden from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. Just a quick one from me, and it kind of relates to some of the comments and themes of some of the questions earlier. But there has been some ongoing debate in the press between Barrick Gold and the Mali government, and I was wondering if you could just maybe share your views on the situation in country, and if you do see any kind of near-term risks aside from, like, the rise in tax audit we talked about previously. Thank you.
Sorry, it's Chris here. Do you mind repeating your question a bit? The line was not great. I think I heard you were asking about the environment in Mali, but was it a specific area around that point?
Apologies. Let's see. Can you hear me now better?
A little bit, yeah.
Yeah.
Okay. Sorry for that. Yeah, just kind of looking at, there's been some ongoing debate in the press between Barrick Gold and Mali government. I was just wondering if you could maybe share your views on the situation in country, and if you do see any kind of near-term risks aside from the rise in the tax audits that you previously discussed about during this call.
I think, first of all, on, you know, from a security point of view, we don't have any concerns. I was there a couple of weeks ago. I'm going in there again next week, into Bamako. Security risk, I think we, you know, there was one activity that happened a couple of weeks ago, and I think that caught everybody by surprise. I can tell you that won't happen again in the city. Where we are, down in the sort of very close to the Côte d'Ivoire, border, very, very quiet. We just continue as normal.
I think in terms of what's happening in Mali from a government perspective we all know there's a lot of mining companies they've got their mining codes that are coming to the end of life so there's a lot of negotiations happening there. It's not affecting us at this stage, but you know so we've got our mining code in place and that's expiring in 2029 at this stage.
Okay. That was very helpful. Thanks, guys.
The next question comes from the line of Andrew Bowler from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
G'day, Terry and Chris. Apologies if this has been asked, 'cause I dropped out halfway through the answer to Reg's question. But just for clarity, I think Reg was asking about timing. Just could you give us an indication of how long you expect stockpiles to last? You know, the current Mako stockpiles, obviously, you've got six months of, or a bit over six months of mining to go there as well.
Yep, we've got six months of mining. We're gonna finish mining mid next year, just before the rain starts, that's all in train at this stage, and then we'll have two and a half years of stockpiles. So we've got quite a bit of material there, and, the major comment I said to Reg, one way or another, we do not see that mill stopping. You know, 'cause we've got the Tombo, which it could delay, we might be able to start in one area and while we're relocating the village, et cetera, but we also expect to bring Bantaco on, on track, but it's very early days in the information coming from Bantaco at this stage.
Yeah, copy that. And just one more on Tomboronkoto. I mean, obviously, you've provided two different resource estimates, you know, one at a one-gram cut-off and the other at a 0.5-gram cut-off. Am I reading too much into the sort of great expectations of that project, given that you're quoting the sort of one-gram cut-off resource a little bit more frequently in your announcements, for example, in your presentation? Is that the sort of... Is that the resource you're likely to go forward in terms of generating reserves?
That, that's sort of the one-gram cut-off, that's been a bit conservative. As you know, you know, in the Mako pit now, given it's an ongoing exercise, we're down at 0.7. I would suggest that the grade there, obviously depending on gold price and where we see it going forward, would be somewhere between, you know, somewhere around 0.7's probably the right number.
No worries. That's all from me. Thanks, gents.
Thanks, Andrew.
The next question comes from the line of Justin Chan from SCP Resource Finance. Please go ahead. Justin, please go ahead. Your line is unmuted.
Thanks, guys. Sorry, I stayed on mute. Just on the exploration project, maybe could you go into, you know, what you think ounce potential and concept is at Mansala in Guinea? And then, the line you just picked up in Côte d'Ivoire, maybe if you could just tell us, you know, what you're hoping to find there in terms of. And maybe just what the kind of area geology is, or should we look for a number of pits similar to something like Ity or kind of like one big pit? Just curious what the geology is like.
I think we'll start with Côte d'Ivoire. I mean, this is a project that our geologists got very excited about a couple of years ago. Very little drilling has been done since then. They delineated 400,000 ounces. The grades look good. The area is large, it's all on greenstone belts there on the Birimian. So we, you know, obviously, we're, we're looking to find the, initially the 2-million-ounce, 2-gram-a-tonne sort of size, but it's far too early to say whether we're gonna get that. We're just pleased to be back in that area. It's the right zip code, it's the right country. You know, so we're, we're hoping to find something there fairly quickly, but we're also looking at other stuff in, in Côte d'Ivoire. And I think there's the same thing in Guinea.
I mean, Guinea is, it's a new province for all of us. Again, we're on great gold belts that have been underexplored. We put that first ore body out, and we did some geophys, and we know that it's extending, it's bifurcating north. So there's a lot of upside potential with it, we think, in Guinea. It's just we stopped that work over this last quarter. The rains were pretty heavy there, so we relocated people back to Tombo to actually drive that project a bit stronger. But we're just getting to the stage now where our geologists are remobilizing back to Guinea as well. Like, I'm excited about both areas.
Gotcha. Thanks, Terry. And I guess in terms of exploration timing, do you expect to do very, you know, will either of these projects see much drilling over the next year, or given your needs in Senegal, is this more of a slow burn?
Sorry, I missed that. Chris?
Yeah, Justin, I think I can answer that one. No, I think, look, the plan is to really ramp up the development of both those projects next year. You know, one of the areas of additional capital spend next year will be in exploration. Like I said, this year, we spent AUD 20 million. We're looking to do much more next year, but obviously, we'll come out with proper guidance figures, in the next couple of months around those points. But we are very excited about both those projects, and yeah, we're gonna spend some money on it to develop it.
I think the key thing is in Q1 next year, as a board, we wanna be able to make an investment decision in Senegal on Tombo. We really want to keep the foot flat on that because it is a mine, it is gonna happen at some stage, so we'd rather want it earlier than later.
Gotcha. Thanks, guys. And maybe just one last one on kind of capital planning. You've got a strong balance sheet now. I know kind of the next project is probably, you know, weighs on your expectations, but any thought towards a buyback or a dividend plan? Maybe where are you and the board thinking-wise on that?
Yeah, Justin, I think, look, it's a real possibility with regards to the cash flow generation. We are in the midst of doing our budgets for next year, reviewing the various projects. Obviously, we just talked about additional capital spend for exploration. We're also looking at what else can be done in Syama. We're also obviously navigating difficult governments these days. So there's quite a few factors on the table that we have to think about before we make an affirmative sort of decision on buybacks, dividends, et cetera. But it's not lost to us, so it's definitely something that we talk about, and like I said, in the probably next few months, we'll come out with a more affirmative sort of statement on capital allocation and our strategy around what we do with our money.
Gotcha. Makes sense. Thanks a lot for that, Chris, and thanks, Terry, and the team. That's it for me. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Justin.
Thank you, Justin.
We have no further questions on the line, so I will now hand over to Scott for some webcast questions.
Jess, thanks very much for you handing over to me. We've got no questions on the webcast, at the moment, so Terry, back to you for any closing remarks.
Good. Thank you very much, everybody. Thanks again for attending, and just to repeat, if you look at our focus right now, it's expansion at Syama, extension at Mako, and exploration. We've got four flags on the sheet now, we're looking where's number five. Thank you very much.