Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Westgold Resources June quarter conference call. The speakers for today are Wayne Bramwell, Managing Director, Tommy Heng, CFO, Phillip Wilding, COO, Matthew Pilbeam, GM, EH&S, and Simon Rigby, GM, Exploration and Growth. I'd now like to hand over to Wayne Bramwell.
Thank you, Shane. Welcome to everyone joining Westgold's June quarter webinar. Today, we're here to discuss June's quarter results. Let's dive straight into it. Slide three.
Slide three is the scorecard we run every quarter. This is the tale of the tape for FY 2023. This is the second year we've delivered our guidance. This year, the objective was to deliver safe and profitable answers. Full credit to every one of our employees and contractors who leaned into this plan and delivered close for our shareholders this year, 257,000 oz at AUD 1,999 an ounce, all-in sustaining, is an outstanding result for this business this year. We're really proud to have been able to deliver.
Jumping forward to slide four. There's a lot to unpack here. Let me focus on the major item. Our Q4 performance was outstanding on many metrics. It starts with safety. Our TRIFR rate continues to improve. Full credit to the everyone who's leaned in to changing our culture around safety. Quarterly production, 68,377 oz at a very handsome AUD 1,780 an ounce, shows what our operations can deliver when our team executes to plan. For the full year, we closed with cash and liquid assets of AUD 192 million. That was up AUD 24 million on the previous quarter. Positive mine cash flow, again, for the second quarter, it shows what this business can do when we get it right.
Later in the deck, I'll talk about some of the corporate activity that was undertaken during the quarter. I'll leave this slide with a key point, which Tommy will speak to later on as well. July sees our fixed forward hedge book complete. At the end of June, we had 10,000 oz , and by August, this business will be fully exposed or have full leverage to the gold price. I'll now hand over to Matt Pilbeam to speak about safety.
Thank you, Wayne. Good morning to everyone on today's conference call. I'm on slide five. Today, once again, I'll take you through the high-level environmental health and safety performance for Q4, and I'll touch a little on some of our annual improvement from an EH&S perspective, for the FY 2023 reporting period. Starting from the top, we recorded a 7% reduction for the quarter, in our total recordable injury frequency rate, down to 8.37. This result encompasses 10 consecutive quarterly reductions and overall, a 63% reduction for the FY 2023 reporting period. Our lost time injury frequency rate remains steady at 0.64 for Q4. It's important to note at this point, that we did accurately report a 0 frequency rate for LTI at the end of Q3.
However, following two reclassified injuries in early Q4 from events that originally occurred in Q3, our numbers now reflect this in their entirety. Annually, however, we are still very pleased at our 54% overall improvement in our lost time injury frequency rate. Rounding out our key EH&S metrics, the high potential incident frequency rate reduced 4% to 6.44 for Q4, which also equates to an 18% reduction for FY 2023. Over the same period, we did not report any significant environmental incidents or significant psychosocial harm events for that time. Overall, the Westgold business is proud of the significant steps taken in EH&S performance for FY 2023.
These numbers draw us level now with our peers and the gold industry in general. This enables us to now focus on our updated targets for FY 2024 and beyond. Moving now on to slide six. The business is very proud to advise that from the 24th of July, earlier this week, we have energized and commissioned our Tuckabianna Power Plant, encompassing both solar and gas energy transition. Tuckabianna is the first of four hybrid power plants to be installed across Westgold operations, delivering a range of sustainable ESG and cost reduction strategies for Westgold. Finally, for me, onto slide seven. This slide is simply a reminder of our dynamic business. We are a 100% West Australian company, 1,400 strong workforce, four underground mining operations, three processing plants, and a proud owner-operator with extensive underground fleet in hand.
With all that in mind, I'll now hand you over to Tommy for slide eight.
Thank you, Matt. Good morning, everyone. Slide eight. Slide eight shows the progression that Westgold has undertaken and where we find ourselves at the end of Q4. Again, as Wayne has summarized and led in the intro, we end the quarter at 68,377 oz and our all-in sustaining cost of AUD 122 million. Taking a moment there to reflect on where we were when we began this journey almost a year ago at AUD 139 million. That is a fantastic result, by no means, to again, the whole entire of organization and our key stakeholders as well. I'll move on to slide nine. Slide nine. Again, the all-in sustaining costs. I'll take it as read. The details are in the quarterly report. A few items I'd like to highlight.
We have continued to draw down on our stockhouse throughout the whole year. In quarter four, that has pretty much remained even. Our capital expenditure for the quarter is at AUD 10 million. It's down from Q3 of AUD 15 million. Again, the capital expenditure for the quarter is the investment in our development, predominantly in Bluebird and Big Bell. Exploration remains steady at AUD 5 million, and is in line quarter-on-quarter, and is in line with our guidance. I will now hand over to Phil Wilding, COO.
Thanks, Tommy. Good morning, all. Slide 10 here. Our key message is that simplicity and efficiency equals profitability. It can be seen in our Q4 results, AUD 1,780 an ounce on sustaining cost. It's a great achievement. It was achieved because our operational discipline started to improve. Our cost management has improved. Big Bell and Bluebird are expanding. They had excellent quarters. Starlight and Paddy's Flat, right sizing and getting into the right direction. On to slide 11. Murchison, it had a great quarter. Our processed ore tonnage was up 8%. Q3 production was heavily impacted by weather at the end. This did flow into the start of Q4. 1st week of Q4, most of the roads and our operations were closed. All of our mines were impacted for the first month. We still came out with great results.
Head grade, it was up at 2.7 grams a tonne, slightly higher than the previous quarter. Our key mines outperformed. Big Bell was a record quarter, 290,000 tonnes at 2.8 grams a tonne for 26,000 ounces. Bluebird, massive step up this quarter, another record, 139,000 tonnes at 4.3 g for 19,000 oz mined. We're really starting to see what this asset can do. The Bluebird underground expansion efforts have achieved the monthly mining records, and the continuing drilling program here is extending this in every direction. On to slide 12. Our ongoing aggressive drill program is continuing to produce the rewards. Paddy's still having some great hits in that mine. Bluebird, everywhere we drill, we have to keep reevaluating the potential of what this asset's going to be.
Big Bell, drilling our deep holes, continues to produce excellent results. We expect these to keep on coming. On to slide 13. Fender, plans to restart this mine in October this year. It was originally paused in August 2022. This was in the process when we were consolidating the business, understanding where we're at. Now that our business is stabilized and profitable, and the economic environment allows, this mine is going to come back into production. It will transport it up to the Meekatharra processing hub and deliver around about 330,000 tonnes per annum at 2.7 g. On to slide 14. Our broader operations, being Fortnum, is starting to show that we have it back under control. Our new management team has reset the operating practices and focusing on grade, not tonnage.
Our continued accelerated, grade control program, resource definition drilling, is really starting to show its rewards there, and that'll come out in the next resource updates. Right sizing in the mine, we did 163,000 tonnes at 2.5 grams per tonne, which is a good improvement over the previous quarter, and we're starting to get our costs back under control. The results from recent drilling activities in Nightfall do support the view that this ore body can become another high-grade feed into the mine and potentially extend its life. Over to slide 15. This is the long section we keep putting up of our mines, showing our drilling and our depth. We're continuing with two drill rigs out of Big Bell, focusing on the deeps.
Bluebird, we've got two underground rigs there at the moment, all our res dev drilling. Starlight, still running two machines there, and one up at Paddy's, along with two more on the exploration front. Which leads into Simon. Slide 16.
Thanks, Phil. The exploration team's had a fantastic quarter. The prime focus has been the ongoing Fingall Deeps program, which we completed stage one during the quarter, with some outstanding results, which are demonstrated there on the slide. Most importantly, however, was the significant change to the geological model for Great Fingall. The Fingall Reef, instead of being a single reef that was flattening with depth, has in fact, based on our new drilling, split or bifurcated into two reefs, which we call pretty unimaginatively, the Upper and Lower Fingall. The real key here is this is a significant change, the first significant change to this ore body in over 100 years.
Based on that drilling program, the resource estimation was updated during the quarter, where we added 49% increase to 4.3 million tonnes at 4.3 for nearly 600,000 oz, 588,000 oz. At Fingall, we're now moving into the stage two program, which is drilling a series of holes into the what could be the first stoping panels in the upper part of the mine, just to give us some additional confidence in the new model. That program will complete in early August, leading to the team looking at a potential investment decision on Great Fingall during Q1.
Outside of Great Fingall, the exploration team has been active, looking at earlier stage targets, both in the Day Dawn region around Great Fingall, but also in the Reedy's area, and also to the north of Meekatharra, testing more regional targets. There are some great results in that drilling, which are included in the details of the quarterly report, but I won't go into those here, other than to say that as the Fingall Deeps program comes to an end, exploration activities across those additional targets will accelerate, as we get back into more regional type exploration activities.
On that basis, I'll pass over to Tommy for slide 17.
Thank you, Simon. Slide 17. AUD 192 million, that is the number we finished at, cash, bullion, and liquid assets. We started the quarter at AUD 168 million, we finished at AUD 92 million, a AUD 24 million cash build. I couldn't be more pleased. Again, it reflects our operational and cost discipline. Key items I just wanna make note here is Westgold remains debt-free. Our operating cash cost is steady at AUD 127 million, Q3 was AUD 126 million, and capital expenditure remains as it is, as we explained earlier. I'll go on to slide 18. Slide 18 is all about our hedges. I'm pleased to say in about three days' time, that will all be behind us from our fixed forwards at AUD 2,415, the last 10,000 oz.
What we do have left is the zero-cost collars we put in early in March. They're about 2,500 oz a month between the put and calls of AUD 2,700 and AUD 3,340, within that range. No further fixed forward hedges has been put in since then, it's a month-on-month proposition. On that note, I will hand over to Wayne.
Thanks, Tommy. Tommy, listeners, we get asked a lot about our approach to M&A in Westgold Resources. Our approach is very simple: It has to be value accretive for our shareholders. In regards to the Musgrave bid, increasing the bid optically would've been quite easy to do, Our approach is, where the value gets above the inflection point, it shows discipline to walk away, That's what we did. Slide 20. I love a page on a plan because it shows simplicity. These are the six key objectives for FY 2024. We'll continue to safely and efficiently optimize our assets. After last quarter, wow, some of these things are just flying. We'll continue to generate free cash. The drilling we're doing is increasing our mine life of all our existing mines.
We'll continue to invest in resource development and exploration. Simon and his team, and Jake's team, they keep delivering the results, they'll keep getting the capital. We've shown to sensibly invest in technology that drives cost reduction. Matt spoke to the power-up of the clean energy project, or the first hybrid power station at Tuckabianna this week. The second one will come online in the next few weeks. We'll continue to actively evaluate organic and inorganic growth opportunities, but the key word there is in a disciplined manner. In closing, I'd just like to say a few things. Full credit to every one of our staff and contractors who leaned into the plan we laid out for FY 2023. It's through their efforts that we have delivered these results to our shareholders for the full year.
We start FY 2024 in a very strong position. We're confident that we can continue to drive costs out of the business. There are still opportunities to drive our efficiencies up, and with full exposure to the gold price, these things will supercharge our profitability into FY 2024. Look, there's a lot to like about this business at the moment, and I tip my hat to the people who have leaned in to basically deliver this. There's a lot more to do. It's far from mission accomplished here, but we start FY 2024 in a very different position than we did 12 months ago. With that, I'll close out the webinar and open it up to questions.
Thanks, everyone. If you have a question, please type it into the question box that you're seeing on the screen. Wayne, your first question is, from an overall strategy perspective, what do you think about other commodities, or is the company fully focused on gold?
That's a really, really good question. Look, t he marketing department went crazy with our title in terms of Westgold, but I look at that and look at some of our peers. Companies like Evolution have two revenue streams: gold and copper. I mean, those two things fly together. Are we interested in other commodities? Sure, but only the ones where we can leverage our key skill set, which is underground mining. I don't see us slipping into the lithium market, the battery metal space. If we had those opportunities, we'd certainly look to develop, but with partners. For us, the immediate focus is to leverage our existing infrastructure and drive costs out of the business, make this business larger and more profitable on a gold basis.
Thank you, Wayne. Next question: what does M&A look like after Musgrave?
Thank you, Travis. With Simon and myself and Kasun, we've got a very active business development program here, but again, key word is discipline. There's lots of things for sale at the moment, and when we evaluate opportunities, we always start at the same place. Is it value accretive, and what are we prepared to pay? We look at opportunities, and we model them on a window of value, and if things fall into that window that makes sense, as you can see with Musgrave, we have a go. When things move out of those windows, we're happy to walk. Look, we're curious, but the main focus is to continue to grow the existing business through our organic opportunities. Simon spoke to Great Fingall, and that is the size of the prize there is really large.
You know, we've brought Fender back on after pausing that last year. You know, within our own asset set, we've got a lot of other things that we can bring back online to grow the business. That said, we're not closed-minded to other things which can make this business bigger or more profitable faster.
Thank you, Wayne. Next question, w hat is the mining method at Big Bell, and can this be employed at Fingall Deeps?
Thanks, Ed. Big Bell is a sub-level cave operation. Can it be employed at Fingall Deeps? Yes, it wouldn't be very economic. There's a pegmatite zone which separates the mines, so what we're using it is as an opportunity to basically put a pillar in place and then run two mines in one. We're gonna transition to open stope down there with Phil. By going into another caving method, it would slow it down, and you'd have to reestablish the mining front.
Thank you. What will be the cost to develop Fender to first ore stopes? Will this be mined bottom up or top down?
Just expect the cost of Fender, it should be around about AUD 6 million in cash out. It's already got an established decline in place, and a lot of the infrastructure is there, and it's part of the Big Bell operation. At the end of the day, it's the second portal for the Big Bell mine. It's on the same strike, same team that's gonna run it. Mining method, it will be a top down. It's got excellent ground conditions in there, so we don't see too many issues.
Thank you for that, just a reminder, if you have a question, please enter it into the question box. The next question is w hen will FY 2024 guidance be provided?
Tyson, you are cheeky. Look, the first week of August, I think, we'll come out with our guidance. We're just finishing, obviously, the quarter, board meeting tomorrow. First week of August.
Thank you. Wayne, there are no more questions at this time. I'll hand it back to you for any final comments.
Thanks for patching in today. This is an outstanding set of numbers for Q4. I mean, all those sustaining costs of AUD 1,780 should show people what this business can do when we get it right. The operating teams are very focused on getting it right now. We're making much better decisions in these mines, and with things like Bluebird, which continue to delight us, the future ahead is looking very rising. Thanks again, Shane.
Thank you, everyone, and that concludes today's call.