Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the St. Barbara FY 'twenty one Q4 June Quarterly Report and Presentation. All participants are in a listen only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr.
Chris Maitland, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Melanie. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Please note the disclaimers on the second slide of this presentation pack. On the call with me today are our Managing Director and CEO, Craig Jetson Chief Financial Officer, Garth Campbell Cohen Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Lucas Welsh Chief Operating Officer, Evan Spencer and Executive General Manager of People, Dale Madison. On today's call, Craig will discuss our Q4 results, and Lucas will update you on our Building Buildings program, after which we will open up the call to questions.
With that, I'll hand the call over to you, Craig.
Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everybody. So look, welcome to St. Barbara's June quarter report. I, as always, would like to begin by recognizing the traditional owners, the First Nations people of the lands in which St Barbara operates in Australia, Canada, Papua New Guinea, and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging. Before I move into the main body of the presentation, I'd like to sadly but openly discuss the fatality we had in Sembary in May.
1 of our truck drivers was fatally injured when the truck they were driving traveled over a safety berm and eventually rolling into the open pit. All of St Barbara was deeply saddened by this tragic incident and we have been providing assistance to the employees, family and counseling to support for our St Barbara team. Every day, everyone at St Barbara is working to eliminate fatalities and life changing injuries. This is our number one priority. An independent investigation has been completed with the reports submitted to the Papua New Guinea Mineral Resource Authority and the recommendations were reviewed and accepted.
Further education on fatigue management is underway with fatigue technology for all our trucks and vehicles and will be progressively installed. This technology is already proven in P and G and operating in places and mining through our P and G operations. So just moving on from that said update. We're moving to safety always. We had 2 other recordable injuries for the quarter, both were at low severity.
We had no recordable injuries in April June. We were committed to achieving our zero harm goals. Turning to Slide 5 on key achievements in quarter 4. On Slide 5, it points out in the June quarter, we continue to drive our strategy of establishing 3 mines with greater than 10 years of operating life. We released the Leonora province plan and added approximately 1,400,000 ounces of gold to our existing 5,000,000 ounces of gold mineral resource.
We have commenced further resource and development as well as extensional drilling and I'll discuss the Leonora province plan in more detail shortly. During the quarter, we also progressed the Simbere Sulfide project through further metallurgical testing along with the development of opportunities identified in the pre feasibility study and feasibility study. We have put a process package at the tender and expect to deliver the front end engineering and design study by the Q3 of this financial year, after which we will be in a position to make the final investment decision. The Papua New Guinea Conservation and Environmental Protection Authority continued its review of the social and environmental impact statement. I expect we will submit the remaining documentation required in the Q2 of this year.
We remain on track for the 1st sulfide ore production in the Q2 of 2024 financial year. Our Atlantic operations had a strong quarter with mill delivering record throughputs. Lucas Welch, who will be stepping into the Chief Financial Officer's role at the end of August, has mostly recently been promoted Chief Transformation Officer, and we'll shortly take you through our Building Brilliance program. Lucas has been leading the program as the Chief Transformation Officer, which has been instrumental in delivering the process improvements, which have helped Atlantic achieve a record throughput. From a financial perspective, we continue to strengthen our balance sheet with $100,000,000 of cash contribution from our operations.
After paying $21,000,000 in debt, this quarter our cash on hand increased by 45% to $133,000,000 The COVID-nineteen situation in our operations at Cymbi has improved with a significant decrease in community transmissions. Cymbi has continued to implement the Simba COVID-nineteen protocols with the support and guidance from external medical specialists and additional controls limit people movements in and out of the operations and on and off the islands. Currently, a COVID-nineteen vaccination program is taking place on-site. To date, approximately 22% of our employees and contractors have received their initial vaccination. We are targeting more than 80% and we have commenced information campaign for all employees, contractors and the community.
As you would expect, St. Barbara's COVID-nineteen management plan is working quite well and continues across all our sites. So turning to Slide 6, consolidated Q4 results. Gold production for the quarter remained at steady 82,698 ounces, which is a strong result given our operations at Simberry were suspended for almost half the quarter. This week, the MRA has granted conditional approval for mining to recommence, with the mine production to ramp up over the coming weeks ahead.
The Simveri processing facility is expected to be brought back online into production by the end of the first half of this financial year. Our group all in sustaining costs for the June quarter were approximately 2% lower at $16.23 per ounce compared to the prior quarter, largely driven and due to the increased gold production at Atlantic. And most importantly, we have continued to operate despite our COVID-nineteen headwinds. Our Atlantic operation recorded a 30% increase in product in production for the Q4 to 26,718 ounces. The mine focused on delivering high grade ore from the pit.
Mine ore was up 19% compared to the prior quarter. This was despite the challenges of pit re watering and congestion due to smaller work areas on the lower beaches of the pit as the mine approaches end of life. The increase in gold production was a primary driver of the 10% quarter on quarter reduction in all in sustaining costs to $11.11 per ounce. Turning to Leonora at this point, gold production was up 6% to 45,157 ounces. The strategy for the quarter was to increase the tons, maximize the resource from mining more than one area at a time.
As a result, the mine grade for the quarter was 1.5 grams per ton lower at 6.5 grams per ton. This lower grade combined with all purchase and costs and the cost of transitioning the new mining contractor resulted in a higher all in sustaining cost for this quarter of $16.63 per ounce. On a positive note at Leonora, all mined at Guale was 27,000 tons higher at 195,000 tons reflecting the continued focus on debottlenecking. This has enabled a strong increase in ore milled for the quarter at 281,000 tons. This is the highest quarter of mill tons in 5 years since the Q1 of FY 'sixteen and significantly increased depth of mine is certainly a great result.
As expected, grade was down to 5.3 grams per ton as they were increased stockpile material and purchased ore to maximize the mill capacity. This generated additional ounces in revenue. At Simberry Gold production was primarily impacted by the shutdown of the mining operations on the 21st May due to the fatal accident at the mine. Just briefly and on Slide 7, I'll turn to Slide 7 now. An inspection of this in various deep sea tailings placement pipe identified that had been damaged leading to the halt of processing.
An independent assessment has been conducted into the failure of the pipe by consulting environmental engineers and has concluded the likely cause of failure to be a local landslide in the vicinity of the pipe. We have commenced purchasing materials and expect the piping to be delivered to site of the end of the current quarter. Installation of the pipeline will be conducted in the Q2 with the plan to restart shortly thereafter. On Slide 8 and turning to Slide 8. Now guidance for FY 'twenty two has been impacted by the suspension and processing at Simberry for the majority of the first half of the year.
Noting that grade reconciliation issues that landing operations have been experienced for the past year, we have lowered grade expectation and guidance accordingly. For the Leonora operations, guidance includes 10,000 ounces of production from ore perch from the Linden Gold Alliance. Consolidated production for the year is slightly weighted to the second half due to the Simberry restart. And with that, I will now hand the presentation over to Lucas, who will take you through our Building Print program. To you, Lucas.
Thanks, Craig. In December last year, we released Slide 9, which shows the 2 near term uplifts we are looking to achieve over the next 3 years across our operations, and these are progressing as planned. Building Brilliance has started successfully with initiatives focused on sustainable productivity improvements to underpin our operational performance. The Building Brilliance initiatives delivered a cash benefit of $41,000,000 in FY 'twenty one, above the target of $30,000,000 to $40,000,000 for the year. Building on this, our target is for $60,000,000 to $100,000,000 in Building Brilliance savings for the coming year.
The next two slides have some highlights of the program that demonstrate some of the productivity improvements, which are driving our guidance for the coming year. As you can see from the three charts on Slide 10, the Building Brilliance program has had a significant impact on key performance indicators in the mill at the Atlantic operations. The Building Brilliance program has encouraged everyone to review processes and ask how can this be done better. A great example is where one of our frontline employees noticed that the angle of the spray bar in the trommel wasn't optimal. Through the program, he was able to raise this issue and was promptly addressed.
We adjusted the angle to ensure the fine particles were able to be efficiently separated and passed through the trommel screen. Previously, this material had been discharged from the trommel with the scats and would have been reintroduced into the mill later. This, together with other minor modifications to the plant, resulted in the plant setting new throughput records in Q4. Similarly, the maintenance team critically viewed their maintenance program to determine how they could best maintain the plants while minimizing shutdowns. Our prior approach was to have regular shutdowns and perform maintenance on all equipment.
Now we regularly inspect equipment and perform maintenance only as and when required. Critical to this is having ongoing monitoring to avoid having unplanned shutdowns. With this approach, we have seen an increase in mill availability. The building brilliance initiative saw the introduction of downcomers, which forced slurry down into the carbon and leach tanks to increase residence time. We also installed sparge units to inject more dissolved oxygen into the same tanks.
These initiatives improved our recoveries by approximately 1%. The next slide, Slide 11, shows some key metrics which are driving increased operational performance at Leonora. A common enabler for these initiatives is the commissioning of Wi Fi underground. It has enabled greater usage of Telerimod operations, which has had 2 positive impacts. The first is safety.
We've been able to reduce the number of people working underground, such as loading, where operators can now operate machinery from the surface. This also has the benefit of reducing idle time during shift changeovers when this equipment is run remotely from the surface. The strong Wi Fi network has also enabled real time allocation of equipment, again further reducing idle time. One of the key drivers of performance at Qualia is a number of development fronts. You can see there has been a considerable change from the start of FY 'twenty one to where the year ended.
As more fronts open up underground, the team are better able to manage utilization of equipment and we have the ability to have more equipment operating at the same time. This increase in development has arisen from multiple initiatives. Two examples are installing ground support and cut length. The time taken to install ground support has been decreased by the introduction of the Epiroc Voltec and using self drilling anchors instead of cable bolts. By reducing the time taken to bolt aheading, we've reduced the development cycle time.
We also worked with Orica to identify the optimal detonators and explosives to use for our ground conditions, which has led to a 5% increase in cut length per blast. And with that, I'll hand back to you, Craig.
Thank you, Lucas. So moving on to Slide 12, lays out our Leonora province plan, which I want to spend a bit more time taking you through. Next quarter, we commenced the pre visibility studies for Hill and Harbour Lights. The 1,400,000 ounce of additional resources we announced in June will underpin the mill expansion study, which we aim to complete by the end of this financial year. At Leonora, our strategy is to fill the mill.
As such, we continue to explore opportunities with both toll treatment and ore purchases as well as joint ventures and acquisitions where we can to deliver superior returns. Exploration drilling is planned between Guaya, Tower Hill and Harbor Lights. There is also a resource definition drilling in Tower Hill and Harbor Lights with a special focus on testing potential high grade extensions to known targets. There are also regional testing targets in Jasper Hill area, which is located approximately 20 kilometers from our Eleonora operations. As you would know, in early June, we acquired a strategic 19.8% equity position in Kin Minerals, which has approximately 1,200,000 house of gold resources and is approximately 45 kilometers to the east of our Leonor operations.
We believe this has further exploration upside and strategic. So in terms of the update of Atlantic permitting on Slide 13, I thought it would take you time to walk you through some of the many permits we're working on under Atlantic operations as we move towards developing greater than 10 year operating life. Under Nova Scotia law, we're required to seek regular permit updates to change where we store waste rock at the operation, with all the final permits expected to be issued by the Q3 of FY 'twenty two. As per the original plan, when Tucoy open pit finishes operation, we intend to convert it into a tailing storage facility. We expect this to be done in place by the Q3 of this financial year.
The conversion is required for the processing plant to continue operating in FY 'twenty three. For Beaver Dam, we submitted the revised environmental impact statement to the federal government and expect this to be approved by the end of the current financial year. In parallel, we are progressing the mining license applications for Vida Dam, which we anticipate being completed by the end of Q3 of this financial year. After the environmental impact statement is approved, we will apply for the industrial approval, which will allow us to commence construction and mining. At this stage, we're on target for the first ore to be delivered from Vida Dam in the first half of twenty twenty four.
We're also working on the permits of 15 Mile Stream and environmental impact submission to be completed in the first half sorry, the Q1 of the next financial year. So in conclusion, on Slide 14, we've had a strong June quarter and expected to be improving operational performance at Atlantic and Leonora to continue into FY 'twenty two. We've progressed our strategy of establishing 3 mines with greater than 10 years operating lives. We will provide further details on the Eleonora province plant, Sangrei South Flow project and Adeira dam throughout the year. Operating cash flow for the quarter was $100,000,000 further strengthening our balance sheet, which remains strong with $133,000,000 of cash and $82,000,000 of debt.
We also have a $200,000,000 of undrawn debt facilities available. The Building Bridges program delivered a cash benefit of $41,000,000 in FY 2021, above the set target of $30,000,000 to $40,000,000 for the year when we launched the program. Our target for the coming year is $60,000,000 to $100,000,000 in BuildingBrilliant savings. So with that, I'll thank you for listening and I will now hand back to the moderator and open the line for any questions people may have. Thank you.
Thank Your first question comes from David Radcliffe with Global Mining Research. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, everyone. A couple of questions are really around Atlantic. And just looking at the guidance there for this year, is that kind of lower rate? Can you maybe just point to what's really driving that? Is it a combination of throughput grade or the conversion activities?
And then it sounds like the pit only really operates this year. Does that mean that all the reserves have actually been depleted at 2 ks? Or is it sort of finishing a little bit earlier maybe than we expected?
Yes, David, they're really good questions. I think if I start with the grade and the reconciliation problems we have, we've been conservative because of our lack of reconciliation accuracy over the year and what we're learning. So that's point 1. Point 2, I think, would be given the process plant improvements through Building Bridge, given the productivity improvements in the mine, there's certainly increased production, which has brought that end of life of mine a little bit sooner than we probably would have anticipated a bit over a year ago. Also, the productivity of the mine, as you would appreciate, as it gets closer to end of life, we are in the bottom of the pit.
It narrows and pinches down, and productivity is very, very difficult to maintain. It would be number 2. And then the third piece of that, as you know, we've had plenty of low grade to medium grade stockpile that we will bring online strategically towards the end of the year, which will lower the overall gold units going to the mill. And that's the other main drivers behind that. The permitting for Beaver Dam is critical, and it's certainly on a tight time line, but we're still working very hard with First Nations and the government regulators to make sure that we fill all the obligations we have under those permit applications.
And of course, we're in we have submitted the applications that we've made, and I think we're on round 3 now of questions from the regulators to be answered. So things are progressing quite well, much slower on the regulatory front than I would have anticipated a year ago, but that's been driven by many different factors in Nova Scotia. But we're certainly working through the list as hard as we can. We've also restructured the team at Atlantic and have dedicated general managers now, one for the operation. This is 6 months old now, but one for the operation, one for permitting and technical permitting and one for community engagement, government engagement.
They're all working as one, but we're certainly resourcing the strategy to permit as soon as we possibly can without cutting corners.
Okay. So convert to a tolling facility at the end of this financial year, then by the time of processing stockpiles in 'twenty three, and then if the permitting comes through, obviously, then moves to Beira Dam. Can you quantify maybe how big those stockpiles are and how long they would last given that I'm imagining there's no plan B if there's a delay on the dam permitting. I'm just trying to understand, could there be a gap? Or do you think those stockpiles could carry you for so long?
Yes. Look, I believe that the I haven't got the exact tonnages of low and medium grade combined to let you know exactly where the tonnages are, but we would have enough bridging of low grade, medium grade to get us through permitting at this stage. The low grade and the medium grade stockpiles always planned to be processed at the end of all the sequences of the dam 15 Mile Stream, Cochrane Hill or strategically in between. So what we're doing, the permitting delay is an issue for us and we will work through that. The low grade, medium grade stockpiles keeps us in free cash and makes some really good money.
It's a very low cost operation up there. And the high grade in Beaver Dam and beyond is still in the ground waiting for us to bring in. The pre engineering work that's going on, by the time we permit, we'll be shovel ready to upgrade roads and also start the mining operations. So the engineering is ready or will be ready and it's the permit time line now. But the low grade, medium grade, which to answer your question, we'll bridge that gap.
Okay. All right. Thanks. Craig, just to give you
a hand there, David, we had at the end of June 2020, we've had 5,000,000 tonnes of material. And we'll have more, which we'll update you when we bring out the reserves and resources in a few weeks' time.
Brilliant. Thanks, Chris. Just if I can, just a quick one on Zimbri. So can you maybe just quantify the capital replacement pipeline? Is that in the sustaining or the growth guidance?
And then maybe how does the sort of the loss or damage to the pipeline impact your thoughts around the sulfide projects? So do you start to think now that maybe you need to 2 pipelines? Or is this just such a freak event that you're happy to wear that bridge going forward?
Yes, Dave. I think there's a couple of ways I'd like to answer that. One is we could the pipe is end of life and it was always due to be planned to be changed and upgraded along with the mixing tank to see water pumps and the land facilities as part of the sulfide project. So it was always planned to do. I think clearly the failure took us by surprise.
It was picked up on a routine maintenance inspection using ROVs. And it's clear, it's been a landslide that's been the root cause of the failure of the pipe. It certainly doesn't change the methodology of the single pipe system. What we've decided to do, the break in the pipe and the damages of the 54 meter mark out of the 500 meter long pipe, it would be the science would tell us that we could potentially start if we wanted to, provided we had tight process control. But I think it'd be prudent to say to replace the pipe now and upgrade all the seawater facilities on the surface, including the pumps and mixing tanks, dewatering, etcetera, is probably the right time to do that now instead of doing it twice.
So I think it's about it will be an $8,000,000 growth capital exercise because we will upgrade the facility to handle the new and the higher throughput rates of the software program. It will be just ready be ready well in advance now and we'll use it when we get going through the end of this year through to the commissioning of the SoFi project. Brilliant. Thank you. Thanks for that, guys.
Thanks, David.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Alex Barclay with Morgan Stanley Australia. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Hi, Craig and team. A couple for me. A quick follow-up on Atlantic given that, the EBITDA and start in FY 'twenty four. Does that mean, looking at your 2020 Investor Day presentation, you'd be doing that lower end of guidance, if beaver got delayed.
So I'm just eyeballing the chart. Is that sort of 50,000 ounces? Does that sound right?
Well, it's a good question, Alex. Yet to be determined. I think the what I'd have to say the timeline to permit Biba Dam is what I would call conservative and worst case scenario. And we would certainly hope to bring that forward. There's 2 ways that we can do that.
One is the upgrade of the whole road facility should be and could be taken out of the permits for the Beaver Dam, the mine. So if we get off to that, we'll close some of that gap very, very quickly. The overall effect, we'll guide on that at the year end and certainly have better information available at that time. But there will be and could be an effect, yes, absolutely. Yes.
Thanks.
And another question on some various sulfides, the approvals, given some of the tailings issues you've had in your remediation strategy, you think that would in any way influence the that environmental permitting process or not really related?
Look, it's absolutely related with the LINZ and the sensitivity around DSTP and any sort of tails management and dam management as far as that goes is certainly problematic when you have an issue. We've been working very closely with CEPA, the regulators, and they have been the honor to have a look at, 1, the footage of the damage 2, the remedial plan and our plans to upgrade the system and they've been kept in the loop from a communication perspective since the data failure. The application for and submission for EIS is well advanced. There's only 2 more amendments to go into that and that then is completed. And the communication between and the discussions between the 2, knowing full well that we're going into a complete new system and we've decided to stay down to rebuild that system more robust and ready for the sulfide throughput is certainly gaining the support of CPAD.
So once all that engineering solutions are in place, I don't see the 2 being connected and we're still on a pathway to get the approvals as soon as we can. Okay.
That's very helpful. Thanks. That's all for me.
Thanks, Alex.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Maitland for closing remarks.
Thank you, Melanie. Thank you, everyone, for attending today's call. If you do have any other questions or issues you'd like to chat, please do not hesitate to reach out to myself or to David. We'll help you where we can. But thanks for today's call.