So, as Peter said, the purpose of today's call was predominantly to talk about the quarterly, which we released yesterday, and the very successful quarter we had ending in December, and a little bit of a flavor of where we are in the current quarter and going forward. Just a reminder, I'm sure everyone on the call knows who we are and what we're about, but you know, we are a mineral sands company focused on production and development assets, with the core asset being Thunderbird, which is now in production and we'll talk—I'll talk mostly about that. We do have some growth options, both in KMS and with the South Atlantic Project in Brazil, and we do continue to look for opportunities in the mineral sands space.
In terms of the December quarterly, obviously a very, very important quarter for us as a company. Completion of construction and commencement of production. Production actually starting ahead of schedule and construction finished on budget. Now we had originally forecast no production in the fourth quarter of 2023, when we had both the BFS and FID and was starting production in October. Clearly, we exceeded that. You can see here in the end we mined just about 740,000 tons of ore during the quarter, which is about 25% of sort of what we would expect to do at full production. And we produced just over 34,000 tons of products in total.
Going forward, the other quarters on here are the assumptions that were in the original, the original assumptions from the BFS and FID, which show us some ramping up over a 12-month period, close to that full mining rate of, you know, sort of just over 10 million tons a year. We expect that we're running, you know, sort of a little bit ahead of the schedule, clearly, since we started in Q4. And, at this stage, I anticipate, with the ramp up going very well, we sort of anticipate that we're sort of on track to see FY 25 as more or less a full production year.
We expect to be up near the top of the ramp-up curve and really be sort of squeezing the last, I don't know, yeah, 5, 10% out of the plant and equipment. So overall, very successful start-up to date and what I would call a typical start-up, where, you know, you have a lot of little equipment failures and you learn a little bit more about how to operate everything. But overall, the flavor of where we are is that all of the plant, the mine, the process plant, et cetera, has operated as expected.
We've been able to achieve our target or our design throughputs on all of the equipment, and the real focus now is on availability. So how we'll drive this from, say, 25% of design capacity in Q4 last year through to full production is really about increasing the amount of time we're able to operate, so driving up availability. And that's really about, you know, eliminating equipment failures, and therefore being able to run sort of 24/7, you know, on a relatively continuous basis. Pleasingly, although we have had equipment failures, which is very common in a start-up, we've had very few repeat failures, and we've seen no evidence that anything that's failed has failed because we fundamentally just put the wrong piece of equipment in or we've got the design wrong.
So they're really just things like, you know, a manufacturing defect or perhaps some damage caused in either installation or in the early stages of unstable operation. So all in all, very pleased with where we are at the moment in the ramp up. Some pictures, more recent pictures than I've shown before. So left-hand side, the mine actually after the first DMU move. So, you know, making good progress here. We can start to see the pit, you know, looking more and more like a, you know, like an operating pit as we create more space there. Picture in the middle is an aerial view of the process plant, power plant in the foreground, and then on the left-hand side, the wet concentrator and the CUP.
Now, in behind the wet concentrator on this side here, that is an HMC stockpile. That's a zircon product stockpile near where we were doing our bagging operations. And then over this side, those are ilmenite concentrate stockpiles, a paramag stockpile. So you can see that, you know, it really does look like a proper operating plant now, plenty of product and intermediate stockpiles. And then a picture on the far right-hand side is a tailings dam, which you'll have seen before. What you're starting to see now is that at the in the near ground is where we've actually you know, we've got good beaching. We've had the dozers on there, moving the material around, and we've actually started the first wall lift.
So again, very comfortable with the performance of the Tailings Storage Facility, and we continue to have a substantial amount of capacity available to dispose of tailings. And this is something I've talked a lot about before. You know, we are in the ramp-up, and there are a lot of things we did to what I consider minimizing the risk of that ramp-up. Oversize is our highest piece of variability in the deposit, and so we do have an oversized mining fleet. And versus the Wet Concentrator, which allows us to deal with areas of high versus low oversize. You know, with the starter pit's in a good location. We've got flexibility in which directions we go. Tailings dam, a lot of stormwater.
We've got our stormwater surge pond, but that gives us a very large buffer for water availability. We have that oversize WCP versus CUP, which is how we can build a HMC stockpile, and that allows us to run the plants, effectively, independent of one another. And as I've said before, we are making concentrates, which means we're not having to sell against a hard specification. We continue to be fully funded. You know, first point, the top line there, Thunderbird itself, the joint venture, had AUD 75 million of cash in undrawn facilities at the end of 2023, start of the current year. That is, we believe, sufficient to fund us through the ramp-up phase, through...
We would currently expect that sort of peak debt draw will occur sometime, probably early, like, either late this quarter or early the next quarter, as we sort of transition from building stock and increasing production and then increasing shipments and sales. As you're aware, we did make our first shipment from Thunderbird earlier this month, which was a small 300-ton shipment of Zircon concentrate in bagged and in containers out of Port Hedland, which we did opportunistically. We're currently continuing to bag Zircon concentrate and looking to make a second shipment of Zircon concentrate in the coming weeks. That will be in bags, in bulk out of Broome.
So we will be still using bags, but rather than boxes, placing those bags directly in the hold of the vessel, and then that will be followed by our first bulk shipments out of Broome later this quarter. We're going through the final stages of commissioning all of the equipment required for bulk loading at Broome, and the KPA completing all of their approval processes required to enable the export of bulk product there. So we do very much see continue to believe that Thunderbird is fully funded, and will not need additional funding to manage the ramp-up. On South Atlantic, we still have approximately AUD 2 million of the option payments to be made during the first half of this year.
The activity levels have ramped up there with drilling and the DFS, and then that's ahead of the potential exercise of the option on South Atlantic in the second half of this year, which would be AUD 12.5 million. And then our corporate costs continue to be around about AUD 2 million a year. So Sheffield itself has sufficient funds to pay for all of those activities through to the end of 2025, when we expect to start to see cash flow from- a small amount of cash flow from coming from Thunderbird while the debt is still being repaid and prior to the bigger dividends... bigger cash flows from KMS after the dividend's repaid. The dividend, the debt is repaid. So just recapping where I started.
As I say, we, you know, we are a mineral sands company, are very focused on Thunderbird at this stage. Production underway. I've shown you some pictures there. Plenty of cash available. We have started shipping. We're working our way towards the first bulk shipment, but as an interim step, we will make a larger bag and bulk shipment of zircon concentrate in the coming weeks. So I think that's probably a good point to stop and take questions. Thanks, Peter.
Lovely. Thanks, Bruce. We do actually have someone with their hand up, so we don't usually do this, but I'm gonna allow them to talk so they can ask the question, David-
Okay.
if you're happy with that, and then,
Yep.
I'll take that right away after. So David, if you have a question, you're on mute currently. Yeah, so that hasn't worked. But we do have another question. So Ray Kershaw, what do you foresee as the main risks from this point?
Yeah, look, But, but I think we are through what I would call the main risk stages, in the sense that we've operated all the equipment. You know, we've seen all the equipment operate the way we expect. We've largely done everything we expect to do. Probably the last sort of piece of our doing everything for the first time will be the bulk shipments, although we are already moving containers towards and stockpiling in Broome. So, you know, I don't see that as a high risk, but it's always good to see everything done at least once.
So I think now we're more in that phase where it's, you know, there are lots of little things that can happen, but I don't really see any. There's no one thing that I would say keeps me awake at night, as it were. You know, we're now more in a—we're heading towards that more normal operating mode, where when you're operating, a lot of little things can happen, but you don't really foresee any sort of significant one-off risks.
Okay. And another from Peter Bangel: "The current share price seems to be undervalued versus company MPB. Also, why is there so many- or why is there such a large fluctuation in share price, considering relatively small transactions?" Would you mind touching on those two points?
Yeah, I mean, well, I think the answer is in the question. I think the fluctuation in share price is largely driven by very small turnover. Well, you know, it is unfortunate. I think one of the consequences of being so undervalued is the stock is relatively liquid. Certainly we don't see any significant volumes of selling from any, you know, from really from any shareholders, but particularly not from our larger shareholders. And so, you tend to find we've got relatively small volumes turned over every day. And of course, with small volumes, it means that relatively small amounts of money can cause significant movements in the share price. You know, it's obviously frustrating for us.
I think it would be fair to say that, if you look at the wider market, it's a pretty horrible time to be a junior mining company. I don't think this is something that is unique to us, and you know, it's very hard to sort of overcome that wider market malaise. Although, you know, I think we've done reasonably well in keeping our head above water. But it is very frustrating because clearly, you know, what we're not seeing is the share price is any reward for the de-risking that's occurred over an extended period of time. I mean, you know, we've been at a similar value to what we are today right through the finalisation of construction and into production, and so on.
So yeah, I think I certainly share that frustration with shareholders. There is no good reason for the shares to be priced the way they are, but ultimately, that's something that the market determines. We as a company can't determine that.
Good. Okay. A question from Chris Baker at Bridge Street. Bruce, obviously you mentioned in the quarter that reserve reconciliation has been good. Can you comment about the quality of the concentrate prepared, especially the non-mag? Are the con grades in line with expectations?
Yeah, I mean, I sort of alluded to with concentrates, it's a little bit different because you don't, you know, the quality test is slightly different. It's about producing payable material. So what I would say is that we are seeing, you know, effectively, if I think about the material we get paid for making it into the concentrates, we're definitely seeing that. You know, whether it's a 38 or a 36 or a 40% zircon on concentrate probably isn't as big a consideration as just making sure that the volume of zircon in that concentrate, the zircon is getting into the concentrate. We're definitely seeing that.
We're seeing that we are getting the valuable products we expected in the places we expected them, and in line with our expectations. So certainly, there's nothing that I've seen that gives me concerns that we didn't understand that we have issues with the metallurgy or that we're getting unexpected distribution of products or quality of those products, albeit that quality is not the overriding concern for us. The primary concern is making sure we get the mass yield of valuable material into the products we're shipping.
Okay, well, on mass yield, Hugh Stacpoole has asked a question. Obviously, production has come early, so well done for that. What is the natural level of stockpiles for the operation on a steady state basis? I guess he's trying to think more about cash flows and how they could be impacted moving forward. I'm not sure how much of this you can answer without giving too much guidance away, Bruce, but-
Look, I think the way to... I mean, a natural level is a good question. Look, I think we certainly would not deliberately... We don't deliberately seek to hold final product stockpiles. I think we always had an expectation that we would have, I think it's something like 50,000-100,000 tons of HMC would be sort of a steady state operating amount. Obviously higher if you've had the CUP shut down for some reason, you're running it with concentrator, but you would normally look to run that stock level there. In terms of final products, it's really driven by the shipping cycle.
So, like I say, we will typically schedule shipments to make sure that, you know, we're making product, we're moving it to the port, and putting it on boats. Now, that does mean that you can have a situation where you're ready for... you know, you're waiting for a ship to arrive. You've effectively got, you know, the stock at port, and you're continuing to build stock at site. So I know it's not a very satisfactory answer, but we wouldn't be deliberately aiming to just hold final product stocks. The idea would be to ship at, you know, effectively as you can produce and make a shipment, you try and make a shipment.
Great. Do you have a timeframe for dividend payments to shareholders and the percentage payout rate?
Yeah, look, I think in terms of dividends to Sheffield shareholders, the way, the way we've always talked about that is we anticipate that the debt repayment at the... There's a cash sweep mechanism for the debt at the joint venture level. What that effectively means is that we would expect that the debt to be repaid at around about 2027, based on our FID-based case assumptions. Prior to that, it may be small dividends from the joint venture to KMS to Sheffield, but they're unlikely to be large enough. They're probably sort of more like topping up working capital for Sheffield. When the p-...
When the debt's repaid and we're in a position to well, when we receive dividends from KMS, we expect them to be sort of circa AUD 100,000 on average, stage one, in those early years. And we would expect that what we've certainly said, while we haven't formally set a dividend policy, I think I've always said that our anticipation is that more than half of that would be distributed on to Sheffield shareholders, either as dividends or buybacks, depending on relative value. I think everyone on the call would appreciate if we were at these prices, we'd be buying shares, not paying dividends. And so that's the sort of timing we think of.
The philosophy there is the view that if we're generating decent cash in KMS from Thunderbird, the intention is not to reinvest all of that into other projects, that the other projects should largely be able to be funded in other ways. And so we would expect to distribute a significant portion of that cash to Sheffield shareholders.
Perfect. Are you experiencing at the moment, or, or are you anticipating any delays due to the weather, obviously, we're in the raining season at the moment, or is mining being continuous?
Yeah, actually, we haven't had any really significant rain events this year in our part of the Kimberley yet. We've had rain. You obviously do, you have storms and rains and so on, but we haven't had any cyclonic events, and we're very well prepared for that. Probably, in order for a rain event to have a significant impact, it does need to be a large rain event. Ultimately, we keep operating up to the point where if we expect a very large event, then, for safety reasons, we would suspend operations in the pit. We have a very good plan for how to divert water around that. We have very significant capacity to pump and to hold water in the pit.
So we would expect a rain event, even a severe rain event, to have a day or 2 impact on mining at the most. The biggest potential impact from a rain event actually would be. Sorry, would be on the public road infrastructure. We have seen in the past that when there's very large rain events, you can get flooding on the main road to Broome. It's very flat country if it floods, and we could lose the road for heavy vehicles for, I think we've seen in the past, sort of 5 or 10 days. The sort of 5 is already long enough. It's unusual for it to be much longer than that, and that would interrupt our ability to move product to port.
So we see it as predominantly impacting our ability to, to export for, or to move product to port, to export for a brief period of time, rather than impacting the operations themselves, except perhaps for a few days if there is a particularly severe rain event.
Okay. What I might do, I'm gonna try the speech functionality again. Someone else has their hand up, so we'll give it one more go. John, I can see you have your hand up, so you may start off on mute. You might need to unmute yourself, but I'm gonna allow you to talk now for a minute, and we'll go from there. Let's see if it works. If not, we'll dive into another question. No, that again hasn't seemed to work, so we'll... Right. So next question, would you be able to just comment on forward-looking commodity prices for the time being, Bruce?
Yeah. I'll get my crystal ball out. I mean, talking a little bit about where we are at the moment, I think. Look, it is, near-term forward predictions are quite hard at this time of year. We are on the cusp of Chinese New Year, and that is usually, you know, it's reasonably significant in seeing what happens in, you know, effectively a key market for these commodities, but obviously for us in particular. I think the general consensus in the sector is that, you know, stocks are generally pretty low in both feedstocks, in both titanium dioxide feedstocks and zircon. While demand has been soft, supply has adjusted for that.
The sort of consensus view is that we're probably gonna continue to see some weakness in titanium feedstock pricing in the near term, particularly the higher grade feedstocks. Although sulfate ilmenite is very high and, and, and, therefore, likely to continue to come down a little bit. That said, our exposure there, we're predominantly fixed price on that through our magnetic concentrate sales to Yansteel, so we're not really exposed to that one. On the zircon front, zircon prices did decline or have declined, you know, a reasonable amount over the last 12, 18 months. However, they're still at a pretty high level. I think global average premium zircon is probably still AUD1,900-AUD2,000 range. A little bit lower for a spot sale into China at the moment.
And the consensus seems to be that there might be a little bit of, or has been, continue to be a little bit of weakness there, but the extent to which 2024 is, is flat, up a little bit or down a little bit, will depend a lot on, on what happens post-Chinese New Year. So, and, and mid-term for both commodities, particularly for zircon, we continue to have a very constructive supply-side story, with the decline of the existing major producers, generally older assets that are, that are typically in structural decline now, and particularly the closure of Iluka's Jacinth-Ambrosia, expected, you know, sort of the 2027 type timeframe. That means that, that, that mid-term, there, there continues to be this-...
you know, effectively this, this question about where, where will that zircon supply come from? And, and that is, we'd expect that to be supportive of price. You typically will need stronger prices to incentivize the, the new supply you would need to balance the market.
Okay, awesome. Would you mind just commenting a bit on the KPA approval, and is this an unexpected issue?
Not unexpected. Ultimately, it's not something we control as Sheffield. I mean, we agreed. We reached an agreement with KPA. They went through their approval that they went for a Part V approval process. I think, perhaps KPA were a little bit surprised by what was required for them to get that approval, given that they were already operating in support. However, that seems to be on track, that the technical studies and all of that has been done, and it's with the department, so we're expecting that... or they are at least expecting that approval in time for us to commence bulk exports as expected.
It's a little bit frustrating, but, there's always that element with these things, is there are things that in the company's, not necessarily in the company's control, but under company's management, and there are things that are done by third parties that ultimately we can't control, and, and, and this is one of those. Although, we certainly are confident that we'll have it, or they will have it in time for us to, to start exporting. And, and we're not ready for bulk exports yet, so the, the port approval is not, what is stopping us from exporting at the moment. It's very much getting all the equipment ready and, and getting enough stock and being ready to, to, to, to, to load that first vessel.
Okay. A question from Roger Costello. So, THM grades were 13.3% versus sulfur void of 15% forecast, and recoveries look to be around 35% versus a target of 56% in Q1 BFS forecast. What factors are affecting these variables?
Look, I don't think you can draw any meaningful conclusions out of those. Effectively, you're not running the whole. You know, the way to think about that, if you looked at Q1, Q1 assumes effectively the assumption that went into that cash flow model is that you are running the wet concentrator and the CUP at the same time. That's not effectively what you do in the startup. So we've run the wet concentrator more than we ran the CUP in the fourth quarter. So what that means is you've made HMC and you've not processed. So the consequence of that is that you've made HMC, but you've not turned it into product.
So, if you try and use the statistics to calculate recoveries, it's not meaningful, because a lot of the material you've mined and processed into HMC has not yet been turned into products, and so it's not recovered. In terms of the grade, again, it's a subset piece. We've only mined part of the startup, but the grades are as expected in our model. Our model is much more detailed than anything you're gonna see in the public domain. So I don't think there's any... We see nothing to give us concerns metallurgically. And I think that when you're looking in from the outside, you just don't. There isn't enough data to actually draw any meaningful conclusions on either grade or recoveries, because you've got a very incomplete data set.
And that, it's not because we deliberately haven't said it, that's the information that you would normally expect to make public. I think we would expect those numbers to line up more as we head towards steady state, when we're running continuously on both the wet concentrator and the CUP. But in these ramp-up periods, it's very, very hard to draw any conclusions from the limited production data that's publicly visible.
Perfect. Another question from Chris Baker: "So any sense yet as to whether the plant throughput might exceed nameplate capacity moving forward?
Look, it's too early to say again. I think the test there is, Look, you can run things, it's not surprising if you do an instantaneous period, you can run at higher than nameplate. The question is whether you can sustain that. And so I would say at the moment, if we get the plant to run, everything to run at nameplate, at nameplate capacity and availability, that's what we would expect as an outcome. Certainly it's far too early to say whether we would expect... Look, inevitably, my experience is that there will be some parts of the plant that can sustain higher production and some parts that will be natural bottlenecks at or around the nameplate capacity.
But I think it's too early, far too early to say that we would expect that we can run the overall plant a lot faster than what we designed it for.
Perfect. Just going back to, I guess, more of the commodity pricing. So obviously, zircon sales continue to be below production for Iluka in their quarterly today. This is from Hugh Stacpoole. Are the competitors acting as you would expect in this type of market?
Yeah, I mean, look, Well, I can only comment on what- I mean, I can observe the same things that everyone else can. But what you've seen is, I think, Iluka, Tronox have publicly commented that they, well, 'cause they were seeing less demand for their pigment products, they were constraining their feedstock production, and they were doing that in a way to minimize rather than maximize zircon production, given the weakness they saw in the market. And we've seen Iluka have sort of adjust- they typically are adjusting productions and sales to match the market. So that is something that's been a characteristic of the industry for some time now. I guess Iluka are very sensibly managing their-...
Their cornerstone asset, their Jacinth-Ambrosia with limited mine left. Effectively, they're trying to maximize the value of each ton they've got left to sell. So I think we, you know, as best you can tell from, you know, trade stats and people's published information, that it does appear that approach to the production and the market has continued. That people, those, particularly those who are key players, are adjusting their supply to match what they see as the real demand for their products, and are not, you know, producing product that they can't sell or trying to force people to buy product they don't want.
And a question from John Carew: "So are there any plans to map or better define the areas with relatively high oversize? Is this needed or can it be dealt with as mining progresses? Also, well done, too, for getting so much done so far," which is nice.
Yeah. Look, the oversize, I think, is something that we are learning more by operating. We knew it would be an area of variability. We've done. We did very tight drill pattern, a drill grid for the initial area. We'll continue to do that going forward. We're also trialing some other methodologies to try and understand more. You know, there's some, you know, whether we do a bit of in-hole sensing things, and so on, just to see if we can find a way to improve the mapping of it. Ultimately, the plant can handle that variability, particularly the DMU. So I think it's something we'll learn more about as we operate.
Could we—you know, does drilling and doing what we're now, is that sufficient? Yes, it is. We can work that way. And we will continue to do dense drilling, you know, mine plan drilling in the short term ahead of mining. But we are looking to see whether there are things we can do to improve that predictability, 'cause that allows you to sort of incorporate that knowledge into the mine plan and know what's coming and so on. But, you know, overall, I think at the moment, it— we're getting what we would expect. Where we see...
One of the key questions we had, I think I've made this comment before, one of the reasons why we focus on removal of oversize in the pit is because the oversize, we observed that the oversize was generally either low mineralization or poor quality mineralization, so contaminated product, and therefore did not contain a lot of value. We continue to observe that, so what we believe is even in areas where we're seeing higher oversize, that we still see the grade in those areas. Effectively, the valuable mineral is still predominantly reports to the undersize fraction.
So the oversize thing for us is more about how do you manage it and make sure that you don't overload the equipment, and therefore start to lose undersize rather than, oh, if there's more oversize, does that mean you're gonna lose more valuable mineral? We don't believe that's the case. Again, like a lot of my other comments about grade and reconciliations, it is early days. But again, we're seeing nothing there that suggests that we've got this wrong and that there's something going on in the ore body we didn't expect. It's just about refining the way we go about managing that. You know, the better data you can have to make it predictable helps.
But, you know, overall we are still looking for those sort of opportunities to see if we can predict it better.
Awesome. How's recruitment going? Are you seeing any more experienced people, given nickel, lithium problems that we're seeing in Australia in particular at the moment?
We had- I guess we'd largely completed our recruitment prior to that, to that occurring. We've been... You know, we- there's probably a couple of things there. I mean, we don't have a lot of FIFO. I think we had 3 at last count, were actual FIFO roles. The bulk of our roles are people resident, except for those that are in Perth, but, which is a small number. The bulk of our people are in the West Kimberley, and they are resident there. So we don't see high turnover. We were already seeing, it being an attractive alternative for people, even existing Kimberley people who wanted to return and be able to live at home and work rather than FIFO-ing to other parts of WA.
So you know that presents an opportunity where, you know, you're always on the lookout for good people. But I guess recruitment is less of a focus for us now. So, you know, I'm sure it. You know, if good people pop up and we have roles vacant, we'll look at that. But it's not having a big impact on us.
Okay, good. Have we received any feedback from the customers that received the 300-ton, 300-ton non-mag concentrate?
No, they haven't. They've got to receive it and process it, so we haven't received any feedback from the customers on that product yet.
Okay. Does the undervalued share price, as it stands at the moment, make Sheffield vulnerable to a bid, hostile or otherwise?
I mean, simplistically, yes, of course, because you could argue that someone sees the value that the market isn't. I think there are some complexities there. I mean, any bidder's got a form of view on the willingness. You know, as I said before, relatively low turnover determining the share price. You have to form a view whether there's enough shareholders who would actually be interested in a bidder, even a premium to the current share price, which, you know, certainly the feedback I get is that the answer's probably no, to that. But, you know, I'm sure there's a price where people would sell. I think the other piece is that our structure, you know, does pose a barrier to some bidders anyway.
You know, Kimberley Mineral Sands is a full-function JV. We do not market the product. We do not have the rights to market the product. So, you know, if you look at the behavior of, certainly typically larger industry players, are normally looking to get hold of product to market themselves, to you know, to effectively increase the amount of product that they speak for in the market. And effectively here, they wouldn't do that. The products are sold by the joint venture, and so they would need to renegotiate that with Yansteel and, you know, knowing Yansteel as I do, I mean, I think they would be skeptical about the merits of allowing their partner to control the marketing. So I think that that is a barrier for some players.
You know, and so you know, it is always possible, but I think the other comment I would make is that M&A and mineral sands is well, fortunately or unfortunately, relatively rare. You know, there is. It is a relatively small sector. You know, there are, it's quite challenging to match, you know, the specifics of a deposit and the nature of the business doesn't fit with everyone. So, you know, the overlap and actually finding, you know, deals to do has always been quite hard.
So it's certainly something that we're aware of, we think about, but you know, our best response to that is to keep delivering as we've promised, and hopefully over time, the share price responds and recognizes that. And we don't have that low share price vulnerability anymore.
Perfect. Bruce, I think we're going to wrap up there. That's, that's the end of the questions. So, just before we do, I guess any, any final thoughts from yourself? What, what should people looking out for and, and what's-
Look, I think, yeah, I mean, things to look out for, you know, we've said we're not going to provide a blow-by-blow account of everything we're doing operationally. As I noted before, we haven't yet tested our full supply chain, so it's certainly our intention to update the market when we make that larger zircon concentrate shipment out of Broome, albeit bags in bulk, because that would be another, you know, a milestone on the way. And then the first bulk shipment, which we certainly expect to be making this quarter as planned.
And then, you know, then from a Thunderbird perspective, you know, the next quarterly, which will be, you know, another year, another quarter of ramp up, but I would expect to see progress towards that ultimate target of heading towards nameplate. On South Atlantic, which we haven't talked about a lot, we are just about to start drilling and the PFS is underway. I expect we probably won't have a lot of news from either of those till the middle of the year. Again, we'll probably wait till we've got the resource before we update the market on the drilling. And the PFS will be the middle of the year.
But we have some metallurgical test work results due from Bouguérou, which we expect to confirm product quality and consistency with Retiro. So that may be something else that we can share with the market in the coming weeks.
Perfect. Okay. Well, thank you everyone for joining. We have recorded this, so if you miss any part of this, we will be uploading it to YouTube, and I'm sure we'll be sending it around via email. Any questions, reach out via the website. Bruce, thank you very much for your time.
Thanks, everyone. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, everyone. Bye.