All righty. Welcome. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, wherever you may be joining us from. For those of you that I've not yet had the opportunity to meet, and they're not that many of you that I haven't met, my name is Tim Netscher, and I'm Chair of St Barbara Limited. It's my pleasure to welcome you all here in Perth online to St Barbara's 2022 annual general meeting. I'd like to recognize the traditional owners and First Nations people of the lands on which St Barbara operates in Australia, Papua New Guinea, and Canada, and of this place, and pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging.
As foreshadowed at our 2021 AGM, St Barbara is conducting its 2022 annual general meeting as a hybrid meeting, which allows attendees to participate in today's meeting either in person here at the Melbourne Hotel or online via the Lumi Meeting Platform. Online attendees can watch and listen to a live webcast of this meeting. In addition, shareholders and proxies attending online can ask questions and submit votes. Please refer to the Lumi online meeting guide available on the AGM page on our website. For those in the room, could I please ask that you take a moment to ensure that your mobile phone is either switched off or switched to silent? Thank you. As per our previous AGMs, you'll have the opportunity to ask questions and to cast your vote during the meeting.
Questions submitted in advance of the meeting will be addressed in my chair's address. A recording of the meeting will be made available on our website shortly after the conclusion of this meeting. Before proceeding, I'll now take a moment to walk you through the safety instructions for this venue. Should the emergency alarm be activated, the first sound you'll hear is the beep, beep sound. Please remain where you are and wait for further instructions. If you hear the whoop, whoop sound and are instructed to evacuate, please calmly walk to the nearest exit and make your way out of the building, assembling at the footbridge in Hay Street next to the QV1 building. Please note the emergency diagrams in the room which highlight our escape routes. In any emergency, please follow the instructions given to you by hotel staff.
Turning now to the formal opening of the meeting. I now ask, Miss, Sarah Standish, General Counsel and Company Secretary, to confirm whether a quorum is present.
Yes. Thank you, Chair. I confirm that a quorum is present.
With a quorum present, I now declare the meeting open. I'm attending the AGM today from the Melbourne Hotel in Perth, together with my fellow directors, Craig Jetson, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. The other end of the table, Kerry Gleeson, Chair of the Remuneration and Nomination Committee, David Moroney, Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee, and Stef Loader, Chair of the Safety and Sustainability Committee. Also, we have members of our executive leadership team with us today, Lucas Welsh, our Chief Financial Officer, Meryl Jones, our President, Americas, Peter Cowley, Chief Operating Officer, Australasia, Andrew Strelein, Chief Development Officer, Val Madsen, Executive General Manager, People, and Sarah Standish, the General Counsel and Company Secretary. St Barbara's audit firm, PwC, represented by Amanda Campbell, Lead Audit Partner, and Mr. Chris Harris, Senior Manager.
Later in the meeting, Ms. Campbell is available to answer any questions regarding, among other things, the conduct of the audit and the content and preparation of the 2022 audit report. Turning now to the agenda of today's meeting. The notice of meeting was issued on 16 September 2022, and is also available via our share registry, Computershare, and St Barbara's website. I propose that the notice of meeting be taken as read. The minutes of the last annual general meeting are available via the Lumi Meeting Platform or from the registration desk here in Perth. In a moment, I'll advise how to vote and how to ask questions at today's meeting. I will then give my address, after which we will consider the items of business set out in the notice of annual general meeting, namely to consider the formal resolutions.
A copy of my address has already been lodged with the ASX. It is at this time in the meeting that we will respond to shareholder questions relating to each resolution. After the formal resolutions, Mr. Craig Jetson, Managing Director and CEO, will present to you, and we will respond to shareholder questions of a general nature at that time. A copy of Craig's presentation has also been lodged with the ASX. For shareholders and proxies entitled to vote and ask questions at today's AGM, I will now take a few minutes to run through, instructions on how to ask questions and on how to vote, either in person, or online via the Lumi platform. Shareholders and proxies attending in person here in the Melbourne Hotel or online via the Lumi platform will have an opportunity to ask questions at the appropriate time in the meeting.
As this is a shareholders' meeting, only shareholders, their attorneys, proxies, and authorized representatives are entitled to ask questions relating to the resolutions. Please note that questions will be answered in the following order, firstly, questions from participants here at the Melbourne Hotel, then verbal questions submitted via the Lumi platform, and lastly, written questions submitted via the Lumi platform, and I encourage you to submit these questions as soon as possible. For shareholders and proxies present in person, to ask a question, please raise your hand, and an attendant will come to you with a microphone. Shareholders and proxies attending online, please submit your questions now via the Lumi platform, noting which resolution it relates to or alternatively, if it is of a general nature. Questions can be submitted one at a time up until close of questions.
Do not wait until the agenda item is considered to submit your question. We may combine multiple questions received on the same topic, and questions will be moderated for relevance. Due to the limited time available, some questions will be answered after the meeting. Turning to online questions. For online attendees, to ask your question verbally, click on the Request to speak button at the bottom of the broadcast window. The audio questions interface will now display. You will be prompted to confirm your name and enter the topic of your question. Submit your request and follow the instructions to allow access to your microphone and connect to the queue. Please note, while you can submit questions from now on, I will not address them until the relevant time in the meeting. To ask a written question, select the Messaging tab at the top of the Lumi platform.
Type your question in the box towards the top of the page and press the arrow symbol to send. A copy of your submitted questions, along with any written responses from our meeting team, can be viewed by selecting My Messages. Turning now to voting. Shortly, I will declare voting open on all items of business. Once voting is open, you can vote at any time during the meeting up until the close of the meeting. I'll now take you through how to vote in person here in the room and online via the Lumi Meeting Platform. Firstly, voting in person. For attendees present in person, once voting opens, a list of today's resolutions will appear on the screen. Please submit your vote using a paper voting card or the Lumi voting keypad. Both are available from the registration desk outside.
Attendants from Lumi and Computershare are present in the room, should you require assistance. If using a Lumi voting keypad, select the item you wish to vote on using the scroll wheel and green square to select. Your selected item will appear. Press the green square to bring up voting options. Press one to vote for, two for against, and three to abstain. Use the green square to move on to the next item, or press the red triangle to return to the full list of items. Now, voting online. For online attendees, if you are eligible to vote at this meeting, a new Voting tab will appear when voting is declared open. Selecting this tab will bring up a list of resolutions and present you with voting options. To cast your vote, simply select one of the options. Your vote is automatically recorded.
There's no need to press a Submit or Enter button. You do, however, have the ability to change your vote up until the time that I declare that voting is closed. Instructions on how to vote online can be found in the online meeting guide located on our AGM webpage on the St Barbara website. For any issues with functionality of the Lumi platform, please call the phone number noted on the online meeting guide. I now declare that voting is open on all items of business. For online attendees, the Voting tab will soon appear. Please submit your votes at any time. Voting is open until the end of the meeting. I will give you a warning before I move to close the voting.
For the purposes of conducting the poll, I appoint Tim Huon of Computershare Investor Services, the company share registry, who has examined and prepared summaries of the proxy forms received to date to act as our Returning Officer. Turning now to contingency measures. In the unlikely event that technical issues impact the satisfactory conduct of this meeting, as Chair of the meeting, I may issue instructions for resolving the issue and may continue the meeting if it is appropriate to do so. As a precaution, I now appoint Kerry Gleeson as Deputy Chair of the meeting, should I be unable to continue as Chair of the meeting for any reason. Further, should the meeting need to be adjourned for any reason, we will seek to reconvene at 3:00 P.M. Perth time, which is UTC +11 hours. I'll now move on to my chair's address.
The present global economic climate is the most volatile and unique seen in many decades, and I've been around for many decades. The COVID pandemic gave rise to unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus measures around the world. Regarding the fiscal measures, in wealthier democracies, voters provided governments with their tacit approval to borrow and spend whatever it takes to ameliorate the economic and social impacts of the pandemic. Coupled with these extraordinary fiscal measures, central banks rapidly reduced interest rates to near zero or even negative, while also adopting unprecedented levels of quantitative easing. Not surprisingly, these twin sets of extreme measures have now given rise to multi-decade high inflation rates. Monetary authorities have responded by aggressively raising interest rates, which are forecast to continue, together with significant levels of quantitative tightening.
To date, however, the fiscal response has been much more muted, at least in the wealthier democracies. Following the implied approval to neutralize the impacts of COVID-19 by any means necessary, these governments now appear to be gaining encouragement from segments of their electorates to continue with the borrow and spend whatever it takes approach to address other perceived important issues such as climate change, reducing the impact of inflation, or the energy crisis. As a consequence, even in the face of significant inflation and ballooning government debt, deficit spending by many Western democracies continues apace. Despite some protestations to the contrary, including last night from our treasurer, we thus have the extraordinary situation of governments and monetary authorities seemingly working against each other in the battle to tame inflation, and it's not clear how this will play out.
In parallel with this extraordinary economic situation, there's been a significant deterioration in the overall global security situation, with recent examples being the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the global competition between the Western democracies and the authoritarian regimes in China, Russia, and others. These global forces have already had a profound impact on the gold mining industry and on our company, with this impact expected to continue to be felt well into the future. Along with our peers, we have been impacted by the skills and general worker shortages, particularly in underground mining, as well as a variety of inflationary cost pressures. This has made the achievement of production targets and hence revenue targets challenging, and inflationary cost pressures have oppressed profit margins. In addition to the inflationary pressures on operating costs, there are also acute shortages of construction equipment and personnel.
This has caused several promising high-profile projects in our industry to be deferred around the world. In the current volatile environment, it's important that we maintain capital discipline and that we allocate our resources efficiently. St Barbara has recently announced the deferral of the expansion of the Leonora processing facility, the installation of refractory ore treatment equipment, and the development of the Aphrodite underground mine. However, we continue with the development of the Zoroastrian mine to fill our mill. In the near term, we're intensely focused on operational performance at Gwalia, which Craig will shortly talk about. As previously announced, we have placed our Simberi operation under strategic review. An early result is the identification of additional oxide material, which has the potential to extend oxide mining at Simberi through FY 25. This provides us with welcome additional time to make the appropriate strategic decision.
Turning to Leonora, there are potential synergies through sensible consolidation, and this has been spoken of many times. St Barbara has a commanding mineral endowment in the region, but we have limited processing capacity. On the other hand, others in the region have large processing capacity with lower mineral endowments, and marrying the two is a capital-efficient option compared to St Barbara building this capacity, particularly in the current inflationary environment. Other potential benefits from consolidation could include management synergies, complementary ore bodies, and funding capacity of potential partners to accelerate the delivery of the full potential of the province.
Clearly, the current macroeconomic environment is challenging, but hopefully, I and later Craig, in his address, will have been able to assure you that your company's board and management are rising to the challenges and are creating and building realistic opportunities wherever we can. We are certainly motivated to charting a path forward through these challenges. Another challenge that looms over our industry, and in fact, the world, is climate change. St Barbara, like many peers in our industry, has announced our 2030 and 2050 carbon intensity targets. St Barbara's intention is to be carbon neutral by 2050, and it is incumbent on us to meet this challenge head-on. We have determined Leonora to be the best place to focus our efforts to reduce carbon emissions, given its long life and therefore ability to pay off any investment in carbon reduction.
We commenced a pre-feasibility study looking at the installation of solar and wind power at Leonora to offset our gas usage. Although we are still in an early stage of the decarbonization journey, we are proud that this process is being driven by switching to renewable energy rather than by offset schemes. Lastly, the re-emergence of high inflation and heightened global uncertainty have not translated into gold price appreciation as yet. With the countervailing economic forces at play, it's unclear how this will unfold. In the midst of these competing forces, I remain optimistic about the medium and long-term future of the gold price. Nevertheless, as stewards of St Barbara, the board and management are obliged to plan conservatively. For a variety of reasons, our company has had a tough few years.
Notwithstanding this, we are working hard to rapidly build on the foundations of recent successes. At Leonora, the acquisition of Bardoc Gold has accelerated the Leonora Province plan. We are seeing permitting successes at Atlantic in Nova Scotia, and the strategic review of Simberi has identified additional oxide material, as I just referred to, potentially extending oxide mining life. We do have a clear strategic pathway forward. In the circumstances that I've just outlined, the directors of St Barbara are acutely aware that shareholders, including ourselves, have seen a significant reduction in the value of their St Barbara investments. In recognition of this, director fees have remained static since 2019. The managing director and CEO salary has not been increased since his commencement in this company in February 2020, and no executive salary increases were granted for the current financial year.
As noted in the remuneration report, executives forfeited up to 85% of their possible short-term incentives for FY 22, and no awards vested to the executives under the company's long-term incentive program. In conclusion, I'd like to thank my fellow directors and the executive management team for their hard work, dedication, and persistence in managing through very difficult circumstances. Now, as I mentioned, questions submitted in advance of the meeting were addressed in my Chair's address. There are two questions that I haven't specifically addressed, which I'll do now. First off, there was a question regarding the company's dividend reinvestment plan and its impact on share dilution. Now, in this regard, we actually haven't run the dividend reinvestment plan for two years.
It is actually well-received by particularly retail shareholders, and the impact on share dilution is absolutely minimal, well less than 1%. Also had a question from one of our shareholders relating to whether the managing director and the CEO has the support of myself and the rest of the board. I've just said that we are singularly focused on, we've got a lot of priorities, but the main priority, singularly focused on turning around the Gwalia mine, and we're doing that as one team. There's no opportunity to fight each other. We have one mission to achieve, and we're working together as one team to do that. I'll now move to the formal business of the meeting in accordance with today's agenda.
The items of business are set out in the notice of meeting and summarized on the slide, displayed here behind me. In accordance with ASX Listing Rules, Guidance Note 35, and consistent with our recent AGMs, I declare that voting on all resolutions today will be conducted by a poll. As I mentioned at the start of the meeting, the poll is open and will remain open until I declare it closed at the end of the meeting. I declare that I intend to vote all open proxies given to me as chair of the meeting in favor of each resolution where I have been authorized to do so.
We will handle questions on each resolution as we progress through each resolution, and I ask that any questions not relating to a specific resolution be held until after the Managing Director and CEO's address when we will deal with questions of a general nature. We now consider the company's 2022 annual report, which was released on the 16th September 2022, and has been made available to shareholders. As I mentioned, Ms. Amanda Campbell, the company's lead audit partner from PwC, is present here today and available to answer questions. Shareholders may ask the auditor questions relevant to the conduct of the audit, the preparation and content of the auditor's report, the accounting policies adopted by the company in relation to the preparation of the financial statements, and the independence of the auditor.
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the PwC team for the quality of this year's audit. As set out in the notice of the meeting, there's no vote on the first item, which is to receive and consider the 2022 annual report. However, does anyone in the room have a question for Ms. Campbell, on the issues that I've just mentioned? Any questions in the room? If not, Sarah, do we have any verbal questions via Lumi?
No. No questions, Tim.
Do we have any written questions via Lumi?
No. No questions, Tim.
Okay. Thank you. We now turn to Resolution 1, the adoption of the 2022 remuneration report. I note that under the Corporations Act, the vote on this resolution is advisory only and does not bind the directors of the company. The total percentage of valid proxies received to the nearest whole percent in favor of this Resolution 1 is 97% as displayed on the screen, along with the summary of proxy votes received. Does anyone in the room have any questions relating to the remuneration report? Sarah, do we have any verbal questions via the Lumi platform relating to this? We have a question in the room. Sorry.
Mr. Chairman, I'm Bob Kelleher, representing the Australian Shareholders' Association.
Shareholders' Association. Yep.
I'm representing 22 shareholders with about 270,000 shares. I wanna just thank you for facilitating the pre-AGM meeting we had with some of your staff.
Yeah.
Thank you for that. On the remuneration report, there's some good points and you've handled it pretty well. The only thing, there's a couple of points. The comparative group for the relative total shareholder return, you've added West African gold company there recently and Burkina Faso and that's just had a recent coup and stuff, so it's not really in your geographic area. Gold Road Resources is in there. You would know a lot about their performance 'cause you're the chairman of Gold Road Resources. We think the comparative group is not really appropriate. The other point is the threshold for the return of capital. You know that KPI.
50% of that item is awarded when the return of capital is 3% above the cost of capital. You did achieve that in the last financial year. We think that's too low to only be 3% above the cost of capital and have 50% of the award be awarded for that. We ask that you look at that again, where we question that that just the 3% above the cost of capital is just too low to get 50% of the bonus or the award. Other than that, I'll just say that we will vote against the remuneration report, but for all the other resolutions. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Bob. We'll take note of what you, your request. Do you have any immediate response, Kerry, as Chair of that committee?
Yes. No. Thank you, Tim, and thank you, Bob. We've obviously discussed this before.
Yeah.
In terms of the comparator group, I think certainly we review this every year, and we're looking to have a spread of companies, and this year there is 40 companies within that. We're looking to have the comparator group to include companies that essentially compete for the same investment opportunities St Barbara does. I think the fact that Gold Road is in there and that Tim's the chair of Gold Road, I think doesn't affect whether it's in or out of the comparator group. In terms of the return on capital employed, we review our measures for the LTI annually, and I can assure you myself and Lucas, the CFO, made a detailed review of that this year.
If you look at the graph within the remuneration report, you actually can see that it's becoming more and more challenging. A 3% above, for a vesting above WACC, the weighted average cost of capital, in fact, is becoming more challenging for us. The LTI itself is only granted in full or vested in full twice in the last seven years. I think it's actually working very well in our view. Certainly, Bob, we do keep it under review each year. Thank you.
That's thanks for that question. That was from the room on the Lumi platform.
Nothing relating to the Remuneration Report.
Okay. Thank you. We now turn to Resolution 2, the reelection of our director, Mr. David Moroney. Mr. Moroney's biography appears in the notice of annual general meeting. I'll now ask Mr. Moroney to introduce himself and to provide some brief points regarding his reelection.
Thank you, Tim, and hello, shareholders. My name is David Moroney, and I'm standing for reelection at today's AGM. My executive background comprise 25 years of CFO or equivalent experience in primary industries, mainly mining, but also in agriculture. I've worked overseas and lived overseas in America and Indonesia, as well as traveling extensively to mining projects in those regions, as well as Africa and Scandinavia. I'm a fellow of the Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, a fellow of the CPA Australia, and a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. I've been on the board of St Barbara for about seven years now, and in that time, I've chaired the Audit and Risk Committee and served on the Remuneration and Nomination Committee, and what we now call the Safety and Sustainability Committee.
Over that time, I've attended 214 meetings out of a possible 217, which is an attendance rate of 99%. My background in finance and mining complements the skills of the other members of our board, and I work closely with the company's chief financial officer, Lucas, and before him, Garth, on matters such as financing, hedging, financial reporting, internal and external auditing, risk management, and accounting matters. As a shareholder myself, I acknowledge the recent poor performance of St Barbara's share price, where we've suffered significant headwinds in all three of our gold operations. I also look back to the time when I joined this board in March 2015, when the share price was AUD 0.20. We had massive debt and non-performing operations in the Solomon Islands and in Papua New Guinea at Simberi.
The board of that time, which included Kerry, Tim, and myself, then together with the management team, of course, turned the company around to be the Mining Journal Miner of the Year in 2015, best-performing stock in the ASX in 2016, and Diggers & Dealers Digger of the Year in 2017. In some respects, similar challenges face us today, but the board is confident in its strategy to deliver on the Leonora Province plan, to persevere in the development of the three Atlantic Gold projects, and to complete the strategic review of the PNG asset. Thank you for your support.
Thanks, David. The total percentage of valid proxies received to the nearest whole percentage in favor of Resolution 2 is 96% as displayed on the screen, along with a summary of the proxy votes received. We now move on to dealing with questions relating to this Resolution 2. Does anyone in the room have a question? Do we have any questions on the virtual questions on the Lumi platform?
There's no questions relating to Resolution 2.
Including written? Thank you. We now move on to Resolution 3, the approval of the issue of FY 23 performance rights to Mr. Craig Jetson, Managing Director and CEO. Information regarding this resolution is included in the notice of annual general meeting. The total percentage of valid proxies received to the nearest whole percentage in favor of Resolution 3 is 99% as displayed on the screen, along with the summary of the proxy votes received. We now deal with any questions relating to Resolution 3. First off in the room. Sarah, any verbal or written questions via the Lumi platform?
No verbal or written questions relating to this resolution.
Thank you. We now turn to Resolution 4, the approval of amendments to the company's constitution. Information regarding this resolution is included in the notice of annual general meeting. The total percentage of valid proxies received to the nearest whole percent in favor of Resolution 4 is 99% as displayed on the screen, along with summary of the proxy votes received. Are there any questions relating to Resolution 4? First off from the room. Then secondly, from the Lumi.
No verbal and no written questions on this resolution, Tim.
Okay. Thank you, Sarah. Ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the conclusion of the resolutions and the formal part of the meeting. We now move on to the Managing Director and CEO presentation. I now invite your Managing Director and CEO, Craig Jetson, to deliver his presentation, after which we'll invite questions of a general nature.
Thank you very much, Chair. I'd echo the Chair's acknowledgement of the traditional owners of this land and where we operate. Thank you to all today for dialing in and listening or being here in person, showing your interest in St Barbara's AGM. Today, I will speak through and to our safety performance of FY 22, our operational and financial performance over financial year June 2022, progress on our strategy over the financial year. I will touch on the disappointing start to FY 23 and St Barbara's positioning for the future. In terms of Safety Always, safety is our number one priority, and we are committed towards our goal of zero fatalities and life-changing injuries. With TRIFR for FY 22 at 3.4, there has been a slight improvement on year-over-year.
The uptick in incident rates has continued through the September quarter and something that we are focusing on. We are doubling down on our Safety Always program to ensure that safety remains top of mind, and we remain committed to continual improvement when it comes to our safety and health of our employees. Turning to our operational results for the year, as outlined by the Chair, FY 22 was certainly another challenging year for St Barbara. We produced 281,000 oz of gold, which was lower than the 328,000 oz produced in the prior year. Leonora performed well despite the difficult year, delivering on its original guidance and increasing its production year-on-year, thanks to our focus on debottlenecking the mine.
Perhaps in hindsight, we relied too much on the last two quarters of FY 23, when we believe the contracted rates in which our partner had been achieving and delivering would continue to show improvement. This, however, was not the case. I will speak to the September quarter shortly. At Atlantic, production is in decline while we finalize the Touquoy pit and move into stockpile. Outcomes were nonetheless below expectations with delays in waste rock storage permitting and unusually high incidence of adverse and severe weather events during the year. Simberi's production was suspended throughout the first half of the year while the DSTP was reinstated. In the second half of the year, the first substantial COVID-19 outbreak on island materially impacted the ramp up. In June 2022, we announced we were conducting a strategic review of Simberi.
This strategic review is broader than just a sale process and has already borne fruit with the improved outlook on oxide mining longevity through to FY 25. I look forward to updating you on the developments here, but in the interim, we are not forced to move forward with the construction of the sulfide project. This is a positive outcome given the current difficulties in sourcing construction teams and uncertain delivery timelines due to global mining booms. The impact and the headwinds of FY 22 has, of course, flowed through to our financials. Underlying profitability and cash generation was down year-on-year at the consolidated level. The underlying EBITDA was AUD 197 million, which is down on last year. This result reflects the lower operating performance compared with prior years at Atlantic and Simberi. The EBITDA margin for the group was 29%.
The underlying net profit after tax was AUD 24 million. The result was lower than last year and driven by the reduced production across the group and higher costs at Simberi and of course, Atlantic. Following a non-cash impairment charge of Atlantic investment, the statutory net loss after tax was AUD 161 million. Cash flow from operating activities was AUD 88 million, despite cost headwinds and Simberi being offline for several months. At June 30, 2022, the cash position was AUD 99 million, with interest-bearing debt, excluding right-of-use asset lease liabilities of AUD 163 million. This consists primarily of AUD 139 million owed under the syndicate debt facility and AUD 19 million in finance leases. In December 2020, I outlined three-stage uplift for the strategy for our business, which is central to our Leonora Province plan.
This started with the turning around of Gwalia mine and generating value through our Building Brilliance transformation program. A primary objective of Uplift One will fill the mill at Leonora. In Uplift Two, we are focused on the increased milling and processing capacity while also growing our mineral reserves and resources organically. Uplift Three was directed by synergistic acquisitions within our provinces whereby value is extracted from clever combinations like our Bardoc acquisition and the purchase of Moose River exploration property near Touquoy. At Leonora, Uplift One focused on turning around the Gwalia, which two years ago was hamstrung by historical waste kept underground. We had limited development at that time and very few mining headings from which to produce our gold-bearing ore. Ultimately, this limited our ability to deliver ore to the surface and left us vulnerable to such events like a seismic event.
We have removed significant amounts of historical waste and have increased development rates to deliver many development headings for the future. Thanks to this work, we were able to meet our production and cost guidance last year at Gwalia, despite having a seismic event in the second quarter. In FY 23, we targeted further improvements in development meters and tonnages extracted from the underground towards the 1.1 million tons to offset the effects of lower grade that we'll endure over the next two years. As announced earlier this month, we have not achieved the rate of improvement that we sought, and improvements will be more gradual over the full year 2023 than we had anticipated when setting our guidance. Our original guidance assumed continual improvement in availability and utilization of overall performance that we achieved in FY 22, which had been impacted significantly by COVID and staff shortages.
These improved outcomes are still below contracted rates and were considered reasonable after the problems that we had in FY 21 and 2022 going forward. Additional equipment was sourced during September quarter to help us ensure that production expectations could be achieved. However, taking into account September performance and projecting improvement rates over the remainder of the year led to the conclusion that mine tonnages could not be improved at the rate anticipated, and hence, the production guidance would need to be downgraded. It is worth remembering at this time that the 950,000 tonnes of mined ore we are now targeting for FY 23 is still 50% higher than what we were mining three years ago. Productivity has significantly increased. Our second uplift was focused on organic growth.
At Leonora, we made excellent progress on advancing organic options in the Leonora province, and the province plan studies have advanced to the feasibility stage. Inaugural open pit mineral resource, and more recently, ore reserves were announced for Tower Hill, and progress has been made towards inaugural open pit reserve for our Harbour Lights mine. We have identified the preferred development pathway forwards with a cost-effective expansion of the Leonora processing facility to 2.1 million tpa and the introduction of refractory ore treatment capability.
Combined, this will enable Leonora processing plant to handle ore from Gwalia and the two mines, Zoroastrian and Aphrodite, which we re-acquired with the Bardoc Gold acquisition. After this, we have Harbour Lights, then Tower Hill to develop. Additional free milling capacity provide further benefits of scale in the Gwalia for Gwalia and Tower Hill and St Barbara investigating the most optimal route to achieve that, particularly given the surplus free milling capacity that is in the province.
In the last quarter of FY 22, we also expand the Gwalia underground itself with the announcement of the inaugural mineral resource of Sons of Gwalia . This is significant because Sons of Gwalia is much closer to the surface than we're currently mining. Sons of Gwali a itself could become a new mining front for Gwalia with additional mining flexibility and ore feed to the mill. I noted earlier the acquisition of Aphrodite and Zoroastrian deposits through the scheme of arrangement with Bardoc Gold. These deposits are an ideal combination with our existing mineral inventory, with Zoroastrian providing near-term free milling ore to top up Gwalia underground feed to fill the mill sooner. We are drilling this now in order to extend the mineral resource and ore reserves there.
The Aphrodite deposit is an impressive refractory underground deposit to complement our Harbour Lights open pit material to underpin the investment required for refractory treatment capability. It is these types of transactions we are targeting across our provinces. Synergistic acquisitions that generate a better outcome when combined than is possible for these standalone assets. The Bardoc acquisition has added over 3 million oz of additional mineral resources to our portfolio and afforded access to significant landholding with multiple additional targets beyond Aphrodite and beyond Zoroastrian. We are moving swiftly ahead with the Zoroastrian mine and have already made great progress. It should be in production this time next year, six months ahead of our original schedule, and when doing so, deliver approximately 300,000 tonnes in the first year of production at an average grade of 3 g/t . The year ahead.
We share a bit of disappointment in the change in outlook at Leonora. In particular, performance in the year ahead will significantly improve. We are not happy with our current performance at the underground. We are actively working with our contractor to improve availability and utilization rates to ensure they can meet their contracted mining rates. We acknowledge it is very difficult environment right now, and we understand the difficulties our contractor has faced in attracting and retaining experienced employees. Across the business, our technical and permitting teams are laser-focused on delivering improvement of operational performance and permitting outcomes. Looking ahead, we do think there is more organic and inorganic opportunities in both Leonora and the Atlantic provinces, and we'll continue to progress with these opportunities. With that, I'd like to take the time now to thank you for your support and patience.
With that, I'll hand back to the chair.
Thanks, Craig. Do we have any questions of a general nature from the room here? Microphone.
Harry Anstey, shareholder. I note the company's commitment to the net zero target of 2050. I note, though, the absence of any indication of achievements along that timeline, and I was wondering whether you have a plan to achieve the target well before 2050, because from what I understand, most companies are recognizing is the longer you leave it, the more expensive it will cost, and the earlier you get in, the cheaper it will be. If we can reduce our operating costs, that translates straight back to the bottom line.
Mm-hmm.
I'd be interested to hear what the program is. Thank you.
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Harry. As I said, we are currently busy with a feasibility study with respect to wind and solar at Gwalia, and you're quite right that it's more about actually amortizing the investment, having enough time to amortize the investment, enough mine life, and we've got plenty of that at Gwalia. We're very confident that once we've decided what we are going to do, which depends on the results of the study, we'll be able to set interim targets, and we'll get on with the job. It doesn't necessarily have to be our own capital. In other companies that I'm involved in, that capital can be supplied by the provider of the renewable power.
They just need to see the runway of time to obviously pay off by annual charges the capital cost. We're very aware of that, and as soon as we have fixed on what we're doing, we'll get on with it for the very reasons that you've said. Any other questions?
If you may tolerate a second question.
Sure.
I note in the report a lot of attention on Gwalia's performance but an absence of the Atlantic areas, and presumably they are taking a lot of time as well.
Yeah.
Obviously diverting attention from the local operations. When you came into the operation back in 2015, there was a rationalization of the situation, and I wonder if that is appropriate at this stage. Thank you.
Yeah. You're quite right. This is a complex company to run with three different countries and was made enormously more complex during COVID, when every country had its own rules and regulations and it was impossible to travel to certain jurisdictions for prolonged periods of time. With the lifting of those restrictions, it's getting much easier. We think that we have or we believe we've got the team and the board that's capable of dealing with all three jurisdictions under normal circumstances like we're currently in. We do manage our priorities and we have, particularly recently, when I say recently, in the last year, put a very strong management team in Nova Scotia.
That's almost self-sufficient in terms of doing the catch-up work required with respect to the permits that we couldn't advance during COVID. That goes on as it is. We also have a strong team in Simberi, same story. In due course, we may find that we divest Simberi depending on how things turn out in the strategic review. Yeah, we are aware of what you say, and we believe that we've resourced correctly to deal with the different sets of issues. Anyone have any other comment from the board they'd like to add?
If I may, I think that's a really good question. I think if I look at what we've been able to achieve in the last seven, eight months since the borders have opened and we've been allowed to do some international travel. Meryl has been recently appointed about a year ago into the role to head the business up in Canada. Unfortunately, everything was closed and has been closed the last two years. Being able to get to the reservations, being able to talk to First Nations, being able to get the government. There was no government actually actively working. Very difficult from a permitting process. We have made huge gains in the last several months with 3 long-awaited permits that we've been able to achieve.
The White Rock permit was one, Clay Cutback was the second, and of course, the raising of the TSF was the third. We've been able to achieve that because of the team, because of the focus, and being able to work very closely with all key stakeholders in Canada. Really good question there. Simberi has certainly had its headwinds with the DSTP failure, COVID, and a few things during the year. I'd have to say that operation's back up and running. It's running at full capacity at the moment. Very strong management team there, led by Randy, and of course, others. It's going exceptionally well. We've got some work to do around costs and different things that we're working through.
As an operation, with the extension of the oxides that we're finding, with the ability to be able to defer the capital and the consideration of how we're going to manage a potential project like the Sulfide project, is all welcomed. We've reorganized and restructured to be laser-focused on the performance and improving performance, working very closely with our contracting partners at Leonora to get the best result we possibly can. It's great to see the work and the partnership that's occurring there. Also for the first time in a long time, we've just about got all roles filled and a full complement of people to do the work, albeit inexperienced in a lot of cases, a lot of traineeships going.
The operations are certainly bouncing back and quite healthy now compared to where we were, and we'll move forward this year with a lot more success, I'm sure.
I'd just like to follow up on what Craig was saying there in terms of the results that have been delivered are not great. We acknowledge that. It's not all doom and gloom. We've had some pretty spectacular successes as well in this period. That DSTP replacement at the deep sea tailings pipeline replacement at Simberi was handled in the middle of COVID. We're talking about what is the diameter of that pipe? It's over a meter, right?
Yeah. About 1,800. Yeah.
Yeah. 1800 mm diameter pipe going out how far?
It's about 600 m offshore.
Yeah.
It's in about 180 m of
Depth of water. This was all done in an extremely remote location. Fabrication here in Australia and in and around the world, assembled, floated out, put down in its place in the middle of COVID. I've done a lot of projects around the world over my lifetime, and I have to say, damn it, this was well done. I haven't seen anything as well done as that for a long time. We just had the biggest cyclone ever in Canada hit our site in Nova Scotia a couple of weeks ago. Not a single environmental excursion happened with all that water dumping down, et cetera. The recovery from that has been remarkable.
As Craig was talking about in his presentation, the tons of ore mined out of Gwalia, being pulled out of that Gwalia mine now is nearly 50% higher than it was during the purple patch that we had when we had double the grade in 2018, 2019. 50% higher. We're beating ourselves up 'cause it's not good enough, and it isn't good enough, but it's 50% higher than it was then. We've talked about the preparatory work in terms of our setting ourselves up for our future. The Zoroastrian underground being ahead of schedule. Craig had a map there of the Tower Hill and Harbour Lights deposits. We have to get a railway line moved there.
That's not done yet, but the work, the preparatory work of trying to get all the multiple parties aligned to do that is well advanced. Lots of these things are going on behind the scenes, setting ourselves up for a good future. You know, we talked about the Bardoc acquisition. A well-executed acquisition for securing our future in that province. I guess there's some things we can do pretty well, and we need to build on those things. Just wanted to add that to what Craig said. Any other questions? Any questions online?
Yes, we have a couple.
Yep
T o go through. Craig, I think the first one's for you, and you've already touched on it somewhat in your presentation. It relates to Macmahon. Have you been able to identify what the issues were with your contractor's performance at Leonora? Can you speak about this? Are you confident that all issues have been identified?
Yeah, look, thank you for that question. The Macmahon have certainly ramped up and become a great partner for us and working very closely with us to make sure that we deliver on all the metrics, and not only just in the contract, but how we improve our business. I think that relationship and partnership is going exceptionally well. Macmahon have had significant, and no different than St Barbara as a whole, we've had significant pressures on being able to recruit the right people at the right time, border closures and all the things we saw through COVID-19. But what I will say is, you know, we're achieving rates 50% higher out of that mine than we were three years ago with all the headwinds of people and equipment and technical things, technical people being available for us. Extremely pleased.
On the downside is, we've got a lot of work to do to continue that rate of improvement to be able to get the result out of the operation that we know that's sitting there. I'm still a firm believer that we're working closely with Macmahon. They're a good partner, working very hard to do what they need to do to help us achieve our goals, and we're working closely together to achieve that. Are we there? No. But we do meet quite regularly. We have quarterly reviews. We have monthly reviews. The CEO and myself certainly catch up every two weeks by phone or in person. We share the issues and are dealing with them.
The rate of improvement not being as good as where we'd backed ourselves for it to be is certainly better than where it was and improving and will only get better over time. I'm very excited about being in this partnership of improvement, in particular the year to come, although we've still got some headwinds and we still gotta work together very closely. Productivity is good. We need to do some work together with safety. There's a lot of recruitment still to be done. I'd have to say that the border's opening up, and we're all looking forward to technical people being able to move around the industry, come from state to state. That is not happening to the levels that we saw pre-COVID. We're managing through that.
You throw the complexity in on top of that, I guess, with the spare parts chain or the materials chain way behind where we'd like them to be able to keep our fleet running. To answer the question, it's a good relationship, good partnership, and we're still growing.
Thanks, Craig.
The next one relates to really the 2019 capital raise. This one might be for you, Tim. Retail shareholders subscribe for just 4 million of the 131 million shares they were expected to buy under the 2019 capital raising offer, which was disrupted by a badly timed downgrade of St Barbara's gold production guidance. Earlier, institutional investors had subscribed for 359 million St Barbara shares. The stock remains well below the capital raising price in 2019. What was the final outcome with that 127 million retail shortfall, which was picked up by underwriter Deutsche Bank and its sub-underwriters?
This is such a long time ago that I don't know if any other members of the team can remember back to 2019.
Tim, I can certainly comment.
Yeah.
I think obviously, Deutsche Bank was the underwriter.
Yes. Yeah.
In terms of that shortfall, it was subsequently picked up by Deutsche and then sold.
Sold on-
on market.
Oversubscribed. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay. The next question is for Craig, and I think we've already touched on it under Tim's address. Briefly, if you could comment, Craig, can you provide a summary of whether your previous LTI grants have vested?
No, they have not vested. No.
Simple one. Thanks, Craig. And the final online question we have at the moment. According to The Australian Financial Review, there is shareholder pressure on us to merge with a rival company, partly owned by Perth-based billionaire Kerry Stokes. Does our chair and CEO think it is appropriate that the most powerful media mogul in Perth, who controls both Channel Seven and The West Australian newspaper, is a player in local mining industry corporate plays? Has The West Australian newspaper been fairly reporting our progress, or are they pressuring us to deal favorably with Mr. Stokes?
Look, first off, we don't report, we don't respond to, and provide details of what goes on commercially in confidence behind the scenes. I have met Mr. Stokes a couple of times, and I'm sure he wouldn't know me if he fell over me in the street outside here. I certainly feel no pressure from Mr. Stokes to do anything.
Thanks, Tim, and there's no more questions online.
One here.
One here. Yep.
I didn't want to hop on board. The comments concerning the,
Yeah.
The offshore pipeline concerned me a little bit. I presume that it complies with the local environmental requirements, but how does that compare with Australian and world best practice? Because that's a very serious area for vulnerability. The other aspect is, what is the monitoring process that you have in place to ensure that you are compliant?
Yeah. Look, again, very good questions. I think one of the things we must realize here is the DSTP certainly disperses tails, but what is really missed in some of the industry is those tails are treated well and truly before they're deposited in the ocean. They're not raw tails that come out of the processing plant and go straight to the ocean. They go through a processing cleansing system, if you like, and purification system before they're dispatched. They're dispatched under license to meet all sorts of different regulatory levels, like heavy metals and toxicity levels and all those sorts of things. We've always had at Simberi a very rigorous testing and sampling regime in that, what we call the mixing zone.
The boundaries of where we're allowed to discharge and where we do discharge. First and foremost. The second part of that, the learnings, and the design changes we've made to the DSTP on implementation makes it more robust, stronger and heavier duty. This pipeline failed because of a significant shift in the floor of the ocean and it broke and fell away. Combination of that and age. That now has been taken care of by engineering and by design, so it's a much more robust system. We've also upgraded what we call our mixing tanks and our pumping systems and our dilution system before discharge, well and truly over and above what we need to deliver to our permit discharge license, number one.
I think to round that off, we have a lot more technology available to us these days that we've implemented on the DSTP for monitoring. Seismicity events, I guess vibration clearly on the seabed and any movement. Plus, we have a regular shutdown now where we use remote operated vehicles with cameras to put down the pipe to monitor that. We have online monitoring systems that are live now that we didn't have before. We've taken the DSTP from yesteryear up to today's technology and monitoring systems to be what we believe to be best in class. Every step in that journey, upgrade, engineering, design changes, license reviews.
During the repair, the CEPA or the environmental agency in PNG were side by side in approving and working with us on the whole journey. I think we've got a great, robust outcome and it's state-of-the-art facility. Yeah. Thanks for the comprehensive response, Craig. In summary, before any tailings goes down that pipeline's fully neutralized, treated and this is a world-recognized way of tailings disposal in the tropics. We fully comply there. If there are no further questions, I'll now declare the meeting closed for questions and I will shortly close the voting. For those in the room, if voting using a paper voting card, please ensure that you print your name where indicated and sign the voting card.
When you have finished filling in your voting card, please lodge it in the ballot box to ensure that your votes are counted. If you require any assistance, please raise your hand. For those in the room, if using a Lumi voting keypad, please ensure that you have cast your vote on all of the resolutions. Again, if you require assistance, please raise your hand. For those online, please ensure that you have cast your votes on all resolutions. I now inform you that, in my capacity as chair, I have voted all directed proxies in accordance with the directions provided by shareholders. As advised in the notice of meeting dated 16 September 2022, I will also vote available undirected proxies in favor of all resolutions. Does anyone require any assistance with respect to voting? No. I now declare that voting is closed.
The results of the poll will be advised to the ASX as soon as they are available. That concludes the business of the annual general meeting, and I now declare that the meeting is closed. Thank you for your participation today and your ongoing support of the company. I invite those present in Perth to join us for refreshments and informal discussions. Thank you very much.