Good afternoon. Welcome to, the 2019 B2Gold Investor Day. I appreciate everybody who came from out of town to be here. And for those of you in the live webcast, we appreciate your attention as well. We have assembled a great lineup of speakers from all around the world, including country managers, executives.
We also have, several board members in attendance, including, Robin Weissman, Mongani Matisi, Jerry Corpan, the lights are bright, so I'm not sure if any other others are here, but, I'd like to introduce to start off Clive Johnson, President and CEO. He'll be doing the opening remarks. And then I'll invite the other senior executives, Mike Cinnamon, Bill Lytle, Tom Garrigan, and then the VP of Government Relations, Neil reader to come up and get
the day going. Thank you.
Good afternoon. As Ian said, thank you all for coming out and joining us, and thank all of you on the webcast. I will, get a lot of information to share with you, but I'm confident you'll find it, interesting. Lots of different speakers. Covering all of, the things we're doing around the world.
There's really two reasons we're here we're together this week of course, the major one is this Investor Day presentation. But we decided to do this, partly because it's a good opportunity to get all our executive teams, our country managers, my managers, all the executive group are bored together in one place. We do that every year at the AGM, and it's a great, success and the ability to have meetings within the different management groups talking to each other. And just it's a, yeah, it's a team building exercise, but it's also a really important part of an international company being able to communicate and share the experiences that we have collectively around the world. So this is going to become our, semiannual get together for all of the of the executives from around the world and our team.
I think it's a very useful experience. So we thought, while we're all together, why not share with our investors? And, and, talk about what's happened in 2019 and all the exciting things that are coming up for 2020. This is a cautionary statement you've seen these before, and basically, what it says is that certain things that you're gonna hear today are gonna be forward looking, so may therefore, of course, be subject to change. You can hear from these gentlemen, once I'm done.
Everybody knows where our projects are located on the world. Just a couple of things to touch on while this slide is up. Nicaragua. I think everybody knows that we've, changed our ownership structure in Nicaragua and joined forces with a company called Caliber Mining. And the reason the, the, the, the thinking behind that the strategy and the rationale was the fact that those mines, the tunic or Rog mines were getting smaller in our world in terms of the size of new projects we've been developing over the last number of years.
But they were great minds for us. They will continue to be for caliber, but they were, we felt it was better to lend them into caliber effectively, and, we'll end up owning about we end up winning with the deal having close now 32% of caliber. So we're still exposed. We were looking to get out of Nicaragua. We do believe in the believe in the future, and it's been a great place for us to be mining.
And of course, it was the start of production for, for B2Gold. So this is a very elegant deal in my view for everyone. It's a real win win win because all of our employees who we care deeply about, as you know, they, they, they, you know, have their jobs. They're transferring to Caliber, who is a company that's historically been an exploration company in Nicaragua, Canadian based as well. But they, they, wanted to become a producer.
So they they have brought it to some good executive people at the caliber level, but they get to inherit a really great mining team and all the people that we have have had in Nicaragua. So Nicaragua's were a great, a great team to have working with us, and I know we all have fond memories we'll be very supportive looking forward as Caliber goes forward there. So for us, we, win win win in the sense that the government is happy with the deal. They understand that Canadian culture that was there with us is still there with Caliber, and they understood that they understand that Caliber is going to focus actually and even further consolidate opportunities in Nicaragua and other places in Central America, a real win for the local people, all the people of the employees, and all the CSR projects and those other excellent things we've been doing about being also minors will carry out on caliber. So now when we look at production, we'll be consolidating the 32%.
I think it's about 32%. Of the ownership we have in caliber shares. So we'll show our production. We'll show that portion of their production. So a very successful deal.
I think it's also maybe a signal of the we get the fact that we're a growing maturing company. So as you get bigger, you need to decide how you're going to, how you're going to spend your time. Your executive time, all of your efforts in the field, etcetera. So now we get to focus on the 33 core assets, of course, being Fekola Ojikoto and Namibia, and of course, Masbate in the Philippines. Those are 3 good projects, and you'll hear today, you'll hear more about them.
Good solid mine life. Really good production profile looking into several years into the future. So that'll be the focus from a production and operational point of view. Want to talk a little bit about, you're going to hear a little bit today from others, but about Gramalote in Columbia. I just want to say on the outset, this is a project that's kind of evolving in a very interesting way rapidly suddenly.
There was some years ago, a few years ago, we decided to start diluting our interest out of the joint venture with AngloGold Ashanti and Gramalote. Because with the Yakan economics didn't look very good, and we thought we had pleased to spend our money. So since that time, there's been some important, a bit a bit more drilling was done, but there's some important geological remodeling done with with this AGM working with our people as well. Suddenly now, we have a much more interesting project in the economics that we see today. It has the distinct potential in our, in our, my view, in our view, to become a producer, and we'll know very shortly.
So there, we're infill drilling Now there's a large portion of the resources in the inferred category. It needs to be in field drilled. But there's been a lot of good work done over the years in terms of metallurgy engineering, in terms local work by AGA did a very good job in, permitting and also dealing with local community. We have an environment of impact assessment stage 1 permit already. So That project is gonna come into real focus this year.
We're spending quite a bit of money as you'll hear in the budget close to $40,000,000 with AGA to infill drill and complete a we're gonna come out of pruning economic assessment in January of next year, and we're gonna have a full feasibility study by the end of next year. Knowing whether it moves forward. The potential for Gramalote is to produce around 400,000 ounces or more a year, for a pretty decent mine life, and some of the recent economics have been very, very promising. You'll hear more about that, especially as the months, the months come along. Just a couple of things I want to touch on before handing over to the guys for exciting detail on what we're doing.
Those of you many here and many on the webcast will know us from the past. But I think one of the keys our success is always worth highlighting in that's experience. The remarkable experience of the executive group and the country managers and the, mine managers, this, this remarkable teams that we have, you know, 12 years ago, we started this company. We had 32 employees. We peaked a little while ago at 6000, including Nicaragua employees around the world.
But they're driven by an extremely experienced group. You know, we joke around, but it's actually true that between the executive team. There's 280 years, working not only in the mining industry, but working together in the mining industry between BMN B2Gold. The time when you look back, unfortunately, in the last 10 years, there's still so many problems in our industry, so many mistakes, to be frank, so much money loss, through through poor investment decisions or poor construction or geological modeling or all the other things that can be problematic in our industry, one of the reasons we've been able to, we've been able to navigate these waters for 12 years and build this company from 0 production to 1,000,000 ounces of gold a year, for 4 different countries and 5 minds is the experience factor. And that that's something that I think, we need more of in the industry and make people some of that as more mergers and acquisitions with smaller, big, with companies that are bigger, but with better management teams as we move through the same as she moves into more of validation.
One of the things we hit head on when we talk about beach a goal and what we do and how we do it is political risk. That's something where sometimes you don't really emphasize that because you know, there's negative connotations about it, but we take a different view of that. For one company or one group's political risk or perception of that, that could too scary for them to go and do it, there's another opportunity for another group, such as ours, who's prepared to go and do the hard work to understand these cultures around the world. The slide I'm we're just looking at right now, slide 8 shows you the, history between Beam and be too gold of the various countries over the last 30 odd years that we have had great success in, from Chile, the United States, Russia, South Africa, Nicaragua, Namibia, Philippines, and and Mali. So they all have something in common.
We've been there, and they've all been very successful. We've been very good in the community. We've been very good working with the governments, that that it's so important these days. So the key of the secret to or the key to political risk management, in my view, is delivering on the promises you make. We talk a lot in this, in this company.
About our culture, which is based on the fundamental principles of fairness, respect, transparency. But if you go to these different cultures and different countries and you treat people in a way with respect and transparently, and you deliver on the promises you make, you make a lot more friends and enemy So one of the keys is if you go to a foreign politician and you promise that you're going to build a mine, you know, within 2 years and you're going to spend all this money doing it and create all these jobs and pay all these taxes, they actually believe you're gonna do it because you're a Western company. If you don't do it, then sometimes you can get into lots of different interesting challenges, within the country that you're in. So that's one of the keys. And I think that you'll hear more about it today about the approach, but that's the strategy, the strategic approach.
And I kind of figured it's an extension of the Canadian culture, this idea of fairness, respect, and transparency, and treating people the way you'd like to be treated. If you were in a country where some foreigners came in to to build a gold mine in your community. We're looking at the growth, very impressive growth production growth chart that we've had for a while, and a lot of you have seen this before. Just as a reminder, I, you know, I touched on it. We've, from 12 years of no gold production to, basically a 1,000,000 ounces or very close to 1,000,000 ounces this year.
Through the various projects that we've seen and talked a little bit about in Namibia and then Otjikoto Masbate. And of course, now Fekola as well. So a dramatic growth profile, and we're gonna hear more of the details from these gentlemen behind me. What comes next? Well, obviously, the next focus for us is going to be the focus for us as well as doing what we do well is going to be looking at organic growth.
I put one slide in here on share price performance. This is over the last 10 years. I want to talk about this because I want to talk about the sector and our place in this sector. I think that this slide shows the B2Gold share price over 10 years, the gold price over 10 years, and the TSX Global Goldin mix. It's a really fascinating chart.
And the green on the chart is a gold price, which is up 42% over the last 10 years. The gray line is the TSX Global gold index of the producing gold companies, down 37%. That's unusual, and that's really not the way it should be. So if someone wants to talk about the money lost in the gold sector, investors in the gold sector over the last 10 years, it isn't really very valid to blame the gold price. Which we would often assume would be the cause.
This could be speaks back to what I refers back to what I talked about about management and the importance of management and the getting it right and some of the problems that we shouldn't we we see in the issue when we don't have that. And of course, in our situation, we're up 3 60% 10 years. From when from when you look at this chart. So dramatic outperformance by ourselves and a few other in the industries in the industry, but I think this is a chance now for the industry, and I'm, you know, quite pleased to see that. I think we're starting to turn the corner that we're starting to see investors be pretty, very picky in their gold investments, just because gold's touched 1500, doesn't mean that you should that people are gonna buy every gold stock far from it.
They're gonna look for quality, and that's a discipline we haven't always seen from the investors in the gold space as well. So I think for us, This is a great time to continue this dramatic growth that we've had, but continue to be one of the growing number, hopefully, of companies in this industry that runs it like a business that runs responsible gold mines profitably and takes the cash flow that we earn from these mines and puts some of it back into building the company, finding more gold and building more gold mines. And now we've introduced a dividend plan, which is another sign of a maturing company. So that was the idea a long time ago if we could create signals of cash flow from gold production and use some of it for growth and some of it to dividend to our shareholders, that's where we want it to be. So we've started that point now.
That's another important milestone in our growth. In terms of strategy, looking forward, well, it's going to be a lot of what you've seen so far. You're going to see focus on responsible mining, focus on profitability, focus on debt reduction. As I mentioned, we're starting to pay a dividend we're going to focus as we have for a long time, primarily on organic growth. Because in our pipeline of projects, we have, of course, difficult expansion, which you'll hear about, which is kicking in early next year.
And also we have the exciting results we came up with more today on Fekola where we're seeing 20 kilometers north of Fekola in the area we call Anaconda, some tremendous drill results indicating the potential for more Fekola type deposits in the sulfides and, Tom, and, and you're going to talk about another significant discovery for our group. And, tremendous potential obviously to see how, how more, much more we can grow production in Fekola. I touched on Gramalote, that's in the pipeline. That could be a very important, project for us. We're frankly, there's very little money in, in the share price for it today.
As we move into next year, I think we'll see we'll we'll come into clear view whether Gramalote is going to be one of a mine for beachy gold and AngloGold Ashanti. I'd be betting on the fact that it is likely to be in our view. So stay the course, continue where we've been going. We're not likely to get involved in very much M and A mergers and acquisitions. We talked a lot about before The idea that the cheapest council, the ones you find, and we have a tremendous track record of doing that, along with accretive acquisitions over the years, So we look at the world today, and the world has changed from what it was 4 or 5 years ago when we, but when we bought Fekola using half a $1,000,000,000 worth US of our shares.
There was no competition at the time for one of the best undeveloped gold projects in the world because of the nature of the market at the time and the disappointments of so many companies were not doing a very good job. Of things like building gold mines. So the world has changed today. So now all the competition is going to be a lot of competition for projects out there. And Fekola, there aren't we don't see a lot of Fekola type projects out there today.
And I would suggest that if Fekola was out there today, as it was four and a half years ago, with a great feasibility study in a good look, in a good location for gold mining with the economics that it had. If it was there today, I think the bidding would start at well over a $1,000,000,000 for Papy on the company that owned Fekola. We paid $500,000,000, as I mentioned. So that's part of being opportunistic and that's part of being contrarian. But now the companies that weren't growing when we grew, there, now they need to grow.
I mean, because of the lack of exploration in the world in the last 10 or 15 years, there's not many good projects out there. So the competition is going to thicker and heavier. I hope you don't go back to the silly season what people are dramatically overpaying for gold projects. But for our point of view, this is a great place to be positioned. Because we can look into our pipeline and see which of these organic growth opportunities become mines growing our gold production and be opportunistic in looking at other opportunities.
And other assets. I think the gold mining industry needs to regain some credibility with investors not just gold investors, investors in general. And I like the trend that we're seeing now with what's happening in Barrick and some of the other companies. There's some really stellar performance in Nico Eagle, and a few others that I would consider owning shares in very few, but I think it's a growing number of responsible companies. We need to show the gold investors and hopefully, ultimately, the generous investors, that we can run this like a business, which is, and, and which is clearly something we in very, and a few owners have done for years.
So I see great opportunity there where we can go to general funds and say, you don't need to buy the stock because you think going, you think gold's going higher. If you don't think gold's going to go higher for the next 5 years, you can probably still do very well within investing in B2Gold and a few other companies, because the ones that run it like a business, continue to grow and be profitable and pay dividends, irrespective of what the gold price is doing. So that's a bit of an overview of summary for me. We're we're very, excited about 2020. This has been an incredible year.
I and I just wanna thank everyone involved in our group, and our shareholders, for the support, that we've, that we've received over the year. It's been a hell of a year. It's been a tremendous year. Great success and it set us up for great 2020. So with that, I'm gonna, pass it on to our next speaker.
Thanks Clive. For those of you
who don't know me, my name is Mike Cinnamon, and, I'm the CFO. Be too golden. So I'm I'm gonna comment a little bit on the financial overview of the company. Sort of two main areas or 3 main areas. 1, the first one is just how we see us rolling through the year end here.
It's not that long ago since we put our Q3 results out So you should be very familiar with those. A little bit about kind of our liquidity position as at the year end and where we see that going. And then just a sort of very high level overview of where we're going next year in terms of budget timing, etcetera, and the main components of the budget. So with that, this slide in front of you now, it just shows how we see the year, turning out. So It's all pretty much on or better than guidance.
Goal, 1st of all, gold production, consolidated guidance range was 9 35 to 975. Now that included a 100% in Nicaragua for the whole year. And as you know, we we restructured our interest in Nicaragua in October 15th. And so subsequent to October 15th, we're only taking into account our proportionate share of Nicaragua, which is currently 34%. So even though we've lost that component, like almost 70% in Nicaragua for most of Q4, we still think we're going to meet somewhere in the middle of our gold production range of 9.35 to 9.75.
We haven't adjusted these numbers for the fact that we don't have Nicaragua in there for the whole year. And that's because the other operations outperformed already 3 year. Fekola's had a great year. We reguided upwards in Q3. And, as baddies had a stellar year, and so they're Dakota, they've all done very well.
So because we were ahead there, we still think we're gonna come somewhere middle middle plus of that $9.35 to $9.75 consult range. Then in the operating cost side and the all in sustaining cost side, We guided $520,000,000 to $560,000,000, we think we're going to come in at or below that range and again, that's really a function of Fekola running so well. Now Fekola, we're not guiding that we'll be at or below. It's cost range we think will be in the range and that's because it throughput was going so well there that we're actually able to put more materials through the mill than we thought. So we put some of the low grade stockpiles through.
So that allowed us to have higher production, but also lower grade. So overall, we're right on guidance for that cost range, even though we have more ounces. But Masbate and Otjikoto, both of those have done very well. Production from Masbate focused mainly from main vein, lower stripping, lower transport costs, and cost guide cost guidance there, we think is that or below for cash costs and indeed all in sustaining costs. And it was Dakota as well, run very nicely, more ore of the model coming out of Wolfshag pit and, better cost profile than we thought, all of which are good things.
So again, we think we'll be out of below the low end of Otjikoto's range for cash costs and all in sustaining costs. All in sustaining costs overall 835 to 75. We think we'll come in on a consolidated basis within that range and you don't see that cost beat that we're we're thinking we may see on the cash operating side. Come into the all in sustaining costs, and that's mainly because of the higher gold prices in the year. Royalties were higher than we budgeted and those flow into those all in sustaining cost numbers.
So we thought we think we'll be in that range comfortably, 835 to 75. Projected gold revenue, 1,300,000,000. That's that's, even I can work that out. I base it 900 and 7000 ounces and somewhere around $1400 for the year. And we're still on track for the, where we thought we'd be in the operating cash flow side somewhere around that 500,000,000 mark.
And so we're very pleased about that. This slide just really lays out where we got to in Q3. I'm not going to go through all of these numbers because I think we've just talked how we see it. They're gonna turn out for the full year. One thing I would comment on in this slide though is is the dividend, Q4 our saw us declare and pay our first ever dividend for B2Gold.
So we're very happy with that quarterly dividend, $0.01 a share And it's the intent of the, the company and the directors going forward. I believe to, pay a dividend quarterly now at the same level, at least as a starter dividend. In terms of Q4, outturn itself, we've talked about the continued strong performance of the sites, We did close that caliber deal in Q4 and cash flow terms that brought in 53,000,000 dollars, 40,000,000 US as part of the cash, proceeds of consideration also 13,000,000 as part of a preliminary working capital settlement amount. As we look into 2020, we should see approximately another 17,000,000 coming cash from that caliber deal. That will be 10,000,000 from the second, the deferred trench of the proceeds of 10,000,000 and another approximately 7,000,000 a settlement of working capital.
In Q4, as well as, as previously guided, we intend to repay another 100,000,000 on the outstanding on the revolver. We had paid, a 100,000,000 up until the end of Q3, and we expect to pay another $100,000,000 this quarter. Tax installment wise, we we tried to give you some, cash tax guidance, for the company, we still think we're on track to hit that 130,000,000 that we had guided in Q3 and laid out there. And just a reminder, this year, we had a Fekola tax double up because we had to we had basically had to pay a saddle up eighteen's taxes. In 'nineteen and also paid 'nineteen installments.
I think as you recall from last year and as we've tried to explain all the way through the year, For Fekola 2018, we paid installments based on 2017, but we didn't really generate any taxable income in 2017, so the installments paid were low. When we settled it up 'eighteen, when we settled up 'eighteen's liability in 'nineteen, it was basically the full amount of 'eighteen, and then we also had to pay installment in 2019. And then Gramalote, as Clive mentioned, we're moving forward there. So we had, we get guidance in end of Q3 that there's actually about $6,000,000, that was approved for Q4 for Gramalote just to move that forward until we get into 2020 and we'll talk about that a little more in a sec. Next slide, just giving you a sort of picture of, liquidity position and then balance sheet overview.
So I guess key here is if you recall, when we were building Fekola, part of that strategy, was that we'd wanna do without equity. So we wanna use operating cash flow from our existing ops and our debt facilities, and and thank you, to indicative banks, led by HSBC, and some of whom are here. Because they allowed us to do that with some of the debt facilities that they made available. But now we're in the 2nd part of that strategy and that's to repay that debt. So in 2018, we took the first step.
So we repaid convert that we had outstanding at $258,000,000. In 2019, we expect to repay approximately $220,000,000 $200,000,000 on the line, the revolver and about $20,000,000 off our our caterpillar loans and leases. So by that means by the end of 20 we expect to have about $260,000,000 in outstanding and debt obligations 200 on the line and 60 owed under cat loans, which is 5 year money. And that'll leave us on the line. We'll have a 400,000,000, undrawn capacity at year end with another $100,000,000 on the accordion.
So it should be so choose to to to exercise that. Then if you look forward into 2020, One of the things we intend to do as part of the Fekola Mine expansion is to fund part of the fleet expansion with, caterpillar loan. Only a portion of it though about 40,000,000 we think we'll we'll put towards, that fleet cost in 2020. The total fleet cost somewhere around $80,000,000, of which we incurred about $36,000,000 to $37,000,000 up to the 2019 year end with the balance in 2020. Some other matters, I guess, just to to look forward, but as we go through the other presentations, certainly on on the operation side you'll hear some of the plans how how how how they see the operator models unwind and are roll out in 2020 and and and some of the activities we'll be doing.
Just to remind you, the budgets will be out, budget guidance will be given somewhere in mid January just as it always is. So those budgets haven't been, formally approved and and and put out in press releases, but that'll happen sometime or early 2020. But I think what you will see is production wise, we think in terms of production guidance, we're somewhere the budgets we think will be close. Pretty much on what we've guided so far in our growth chart and that's what Bill's going to talk to in a little bit. Somewhere around that 1,000,000 ounces.
Fekola will be somewhere in the 600,000 ounces part of that. And and we we were not going to give any cost guidance for 2020 yet, but, Fekola is going to become a much bigger part. Of our budget, our production in 20 20, 60 percent of the 1,000,000 ounces. So with Fekola's cost profile and the expansion, that's being implemented right now and be fully online by the end of Q3, in terms of mill expansion and earlier than that in terms of expanded fleet. We should see cost improvements.
So, overall, we think we're going to have some pretty exciting comparative cash cost and all in sustaining cost to tell you about in early January. Some of the sort of costs you'll see for coal energy, the expansion will be there. Obviously, we've talked about that a bit in the last few releases. There's approximately $95,000,000 to common capital for that expansion, in 2020. We've already spent some of it this year.
And like I say, there'll be about $40,000,000 of the fleet component of that finance with caterpillar loans. And then we'll we've also got stripping campaigns that will continue at Fekola phases, 6 and some. Ojikoto, you're going to hear a bit today about, some of the planned underground activity there and the ongoing scripting at Bullshag and Otjikoto. And also, I think a little bit about, the next phase of the solar expansion, the power line. An Amazbati's business as usual.
We did in in 2020. We we actually did the mill expansion over a year ago and got it running fully online. So we'll see the benefit of that 8,000,000 ton capacity for Masbate for the full year. Overall, when you take that sort of cost profile into account, especially with the contribution of Fekola, we expect to see cash flows from operations increase from where we project them this year. And what do we want to do with that cash next year?
Well, one of the things we intend to do is keep paying down on the line. And, based on current gold prices, it's our expectation, that will have paid down the revolver by sometime by the end of Q3 next year. And then Clive of course mentioned Gramalote. You'll hear a bit more about that. But, we will have up to 40,000,000 in the budget's budget capital.
Or sorry, there'll be a budget agreement with, Anglo. We expect somewhere around are up to 40,000,000 for 2020. And our share of that will be 14,000,000 upfront payment where we fund 14 and then we'll share the balance. Once we've funded 13,900,000 or 14,000,000 on Gramalote, we'll have earned back to fifty-fifty joint venture interest and with the right to be manager. And subsequent does funding that $14,000,000, then we'll split the balance of the cost fifty-fifty with them as we go forward.
So I think that's all I wanted to comment on, on the finances here and just give you a high level overview of where it's going next year. And like I say, full budget guidance, we expect to come out sometime mid January. And with that, I'll hand it over to Bill.
Good afternoon. For those who don't know me, I'm Bill Lytle, I'm the Senior Vice President of Operations. I guess I wanted to start out. This this is a bit unusual for me. Normally, when you meet with me, when we see, I'm talking about the operations.
I'm telling you each about each individual site, about CSR, about HSE. All those people are here today. And someone actually pointed out when they came in today that really the reason they're here is to talk to the people that are at the face. And so there will be some people not speaking today that are here today that you may wanna grab. And so I just wanna do some real quick introductions before I get going on any of the slides.
And I wanna start with someone that actually doesn't get a lot of FaceTime within the company, at least a senior VP. Dennis Stansberry is here. Dennis Stansberry is our senior VP of acquisitions and project development. So anything that happens really prior to feasibility is all Dennis. So when we're talking about Gramalote, we're talking about Anaconda, those those are things that Dennis has taken up to this point.
And then coming across this side, you got Randy Ryker. Where's Randy at? So Randy, in the back over there, Randy used to be the, manager at Fekola, the general manager at Fekola, a long time B2 employee. I think people probably remember him from Russia when he's he was with Bima. Randy has been promoted to VP now, VP of Operations, so he's in the corporate office.
Overseeing all three operations. And the reason that he has Masbate in his profile is that Dale Craig, our VP of Operations is she going to Gramalote. He will be the country manager as we develop that project. Also, John Rahale is here. John Rahale is our VP of Metallurgy I think everyone's aware of how well our facilities operate.
And then John is a very strong part of that. And, Peter Montania, who's a director of engineering, is also here today. ESG, you're gonna meet all of them today, so I'm just gonna quickly go through. You've got, Ken Jones, Darrin Perry and Lee and Kelly. He'll all be speaking on ESG on HSE and and, social issues.
On the Fekola side, of course, you'll hear from you'll hear from Muhammad Diara, who's a country manager and Raimed, who's the GM. Remember, Raimed used to be at Masbate. He's now moved across from Fekola. We've also got Vic King here. Vic King is our VP of West Africa.
Masbate, we've got Chris and Dan Moore. So Chris is country manager. Dan is the GM on-site. It's been with us about 3 years. And then we've got Climico here who's the, who's the chairman of our of our local affiliate there.
In Namibia, you've got Mark Dahl, who's the Managing Director, and it used to be responsible really for everything, and he still kind of is responsible for everything, but he's kind of has shifted his focus a little bit and we brought a GM on Eric Bernard, and he'll be speaking here for the first time, on all the issues at at Otjikoto. So when you see these guys, those are the guys that have all the
answers. Alright.
Let me go back one.
There you go.
This slide, I I don't wanna spend too much time on it because Mike kind of covered everything that I would have said on this slide. But I what I really want to say is that we're we're deep into the into Q4 now. We don't there's No surprises as far as we can tell. When Mike says that we think we're going to hit guidance, we're very confident in these numbers. And then on 2020, as Mike said, we haven't put out our budget numbers yet.
But what we will say is that what we're projecting our estimates in the deck. We feel very confident in. Obviously, that hinges on the fact that we get Fekola online. We will start the underground, at Otjikoto next year, and that'll be talked about during the Otjikoto presentation. Okay.
This this is really where I this is where it gets interesting for me. Clive said when he was out on the road, there was a lot of people saying, okay, you guys have done all these great things and you've built this amazing company, but now you're gonna happen in this couple of years? You're gonna fall off a cliff. You've got no production. I don't know where those where that information's come from, certainly in, you know, our estimations in our life of mine, we looked out 5 years and we and we see that we've got a very steady 5 years of 950,000 ounces a year plus, assuming that we get Fekola and the Otjikoto Underground, and our all in sustaining costs are are really quite competitive.
So don't want to project even further than that, but what we can say is that over the next 5 years, we feel like we're in very good shape and we're in a position that'll give us time to develop more projects. And as Clive already alluded to, we believe that our projects are actually gonna come from internal And now you've gotta let me do some hand waving here, right? Because we're we're thinking forward now. Allow me allow me to do some hand waving. So let's say The PEA comes out, which is going to come out in Q1 of next year, positive.
That then turns our full fees team loose and they're ready to go. We're actually working on it already. We've already discussed with AGA that we would have a feasibility done by the end
of next
year. If in fact that the feasibility shores up what the PEA says, that would then turn our construction team loose in Q1 of 2021. Once again, doing some grand hand waving, typically it takes us kind of that 24 to 30 months to build a project you could cert certainly see within 5 years, Gramalo, to coming online. Okay? So how what does that mean once again for the rest of our growth?
I know that Tom's gonna spend a lot of time talking about some of the positive results in in Molly. We're very excited about this project. So much so once again, if you get a chance, talk to Dennis, We've already spent a lot of time doing some front end engineering. You know, I'm sure everyone's aware there's a resource there already over 800,000 ounces. And when we've been out on the road, we've talked a lot about this.
Is is there a project, a saprolite project where you could do, you know, a very, a very simple mine and mill and produce 100 ounces a year. Is there a project there? And then it turned out that the the the theory always was that there was there was a feeder zone somewhere below that so there's got to be a hard rock source. So if we could find the hard rock source, what would that mean? So then we started looking at would we do some sort of combination of Saporlight Hard Rock.
Would we truck it if we found if we found a high grade pocket? And now I believe I believe quite strongly that that that we're on to something significant. And so we've actually talked about it internally that we just need to step back as as engineers and say, wait a minute. Once again, are we designing the right plant? Are we designing the right size?
And so we absolutely believe there's a potential for a project there. We're just waiting for the exploration to catch up a little bit. So as as we work on Gramalote, they will continue to develop Anaconda. You can imagine in a year or 2 when they're ready to go, our our engineering team will absolutely ready to come off of Gramalote and write on to Anaconda if there's a project there. So you can imagine a nice sequence where we go right from the Fekola expansion part of the team working on the Otjikoto Underground into Gramalote into Anaconda.
And once again, it's all hand waving because there's not even a PEA done there. But internally, that's what we're thinking about as far as development. And then this is this is my last slide here. Just a couple of of catalysts This is right out of the deck here. You will see a new mineral resource in in q 4 this year and then an updated mine plan for Fekola in q12020.
The infill drilling at Gramalote and then a PEA in Q1 of 2020 feasibility done by the end of next year And then we'll talk a lot today about the Otjikoto Underground. This this will be the first time that we've kinda have publicly discussed the Otjikode Underground, and we haven't even officially brought it to board yet. And so once again, it doesn't have board approval, but we believe very strongly that that's the way we're gonna go. And so we're gonna a little bit about that. And with that, I'll turn it over to you Tom.
Thank you, Bill. Just before I get going on exploration, I just wanna introduce, where you probably already know him, but Brian Scott and human can enter, VPs of Exploration And And Geology, who are here today, to answer questions for you guys, if you have any questions for them. And they're a big part of the success we've had over the years. So the first slide here shows a map of where we're involved. We're we're doing exploration around all the mine sites.
And then we have several early stage exploration projects, in numerous spots around the world, Finland and Botswana amongst them that are shown on the map here. Our expiration is, is drill heavy. As has always been, you don't make discoveries without doing a lot of drilling. As of the end of October, we had, over 150,000 meters of drilling done. The bulk of that's in, in West Africa, obviously, around Fekola.
But over 1500 1500 holes drilled, as of end of October. Expiration budget for the year distributed around the world has been around $50,000,000. Our exploration plans for next year, although it has not been approved by the board yet, we'll be in the same order of magnitude. Now I'm not going to talk too much on some of the projects here, because Andy Brown, our expiration manager for, Africa is going to talk about Fekola and, Otjikoto later. But I will give some of the notes on Fekola.
You know, Fekola expiration focus this year, The main focus for the first half of the year was to, infill drill the resource, to the PEA pit once that was completed, we shifted the drilling on to some of our regional targets. The main one being, looking at saprolite under, Anaconda or the Anaconda area in general, and then Mamba more specifically as we made a discovery later in the year. Plans for the Fekola area next year, we'll be continuing to drill further north on Fekola. Yes. It is still open unbelievably, but it still is wide open to Northwell.
So we'll continue looking at that to the north. Some of the targets in and around Fekola. And then we'll try and get to, Mamba to some point of a resource. It really depends on where the drilling goes and how big it gets. But as Bill says, said earlier, it's a very significant, project for us now in terms of exploration and we'll continue that.
We'll also be drilling the saprolite resource is still open to the north along in the outer trend, and we'll continue doing saprolite exploration there. We'll also be doing more drilling to find other sulfide sources that are sitting underneath the saprolite. Onto Masbate, Expiration Masbate was focused mainly on doing infill drilling of some of the resources this year. That's going to continue next year as we look at, higher costs or sort of higher, not higher costs, higher gold prices. Excuse me, guys.
Higher gold prices, it looks like, some of the mass body pits can get deeper. So our focus next year's expiration is going to be on drilling the deeper portion or the side portions of some of these pits to see how to basically take that inferred portion, bring it in indicated, and then we'll know how big our pits can get in Masbate. But there is room for growth sort of expiration by gold price for Masbate, I guess, for next year. Onto, Namibia, we did a fair bit of exploration at Otjikoto going down, plunge on Wolfshag, to understand where Wolschag is going for future underground, but we also spent a fair bit of drilling meters on, some adjacent structures that, Annie will talk about. Going forward in the future there, the exploration will continue all the same lines.
We've also done a fair bit of drilling in, on Dundu which is an ex, early stage exploration project to the south. Intugramalote is a lot of people have said started, work on Gramalote. We plan to drill, by May, about 47,000 meters of, drilling, mainly diamond drilling on, Gromlottte Ridge infill drilling, and we'll do another 2700 Meters of, RC drilling on the saprolite portion of Trinidad to bring that to a better understanding. And we'll do a little bit of deeper drilling on Trinidad to get a geological understanding of the Trinidad Zone itself. This is, to be completed in May.
And then within a couple of months of that, we should have a resource done, to then plant that into the engineer's hands and continue on with the PE which is scheduled later in the year or sorry, feasibility scheduled later in the year. No, PEA, excuse me. Burkina Faso, expiration Burkina Faso was focused, around Kiaka and some targets between Kiaka and Tuega. The plan in 2020 is we've got a little bit of drilling, planned for earlier in the year, and then we're gonna have to refocus on what we're gonna do with Kiaka. Now, grassroots exploration.
A lot of people have asked me where we're doing our grassroots exploration, what we're doing in grassroots exploration. It's one of those little things you like to do as an exploration geologist. You kind of keep your idea to yourself. And this is one of those cases. We will be continuing a fairly aggressive grassroots exploration program next year, Part of that is going to be joint ventures with junior companies and evaluating some junior companies or midsize companies on early stage projects they may have that are available or they need funding on.
In addition to that, there's going to be a significant amount of the budget towards projects we've generated ourselves. My view is, and, and it's share it's being shared more and more. Is that, with the lack of funding, with, exploration out there in the last few years. The juniors haven't generated a lot of targets. And, and the second part of that is you guys do such a good job these early stage projects that there's not a lot of value that are left in it for companies like ours where we're looking at them.
So we we came to a conclusion of a year or 2 years ago that was time to start generating an targets, kind of what we did, you know, people like me very early in our career doing early stage expiration on on company driven targets. And that will be how our grassroots is gonna be done going forward. And I I hope we'll continue to have a good sized budget towards that. So I'll hand it over to you, Neil. Thank you.
Thanks very much, Tom. It's a pleasure to be with you and, and, again, thanks everyone for coming out today. I'm going to just do a quick, high level snapshot here of our government relations at the 3 countries where we mine, as well as Columbia. So in the photo, just to start with Mali, Mohammed Diorra, who will speak later, our country manager. This is greeting the president of Mali It was in Fekola for the mine opening.
We'll have as part of a very strong senior management team that we have in Mali with very good networks into the national government, including the mining ministry and other key offices in the country. He's also a former advisor in the Ministry of Mines, and worked in the Maui private sector. So this is the quality of people that we have and the quality of people that we're attracting. Just over to the next slide. Just at a very high level, it's important to note the good relations that Canada enjoys with Mali I came from government of course.
And, for me, I'm very conscious of these relationships, but now that I'm working in the private sector, as a backdrop, how important it is to have good level relations with the country between the governments, which sets the stage for private investment and assist the success of of companies like B2Gold. In the case of Mali, since 1960, we've been a partner of them with development assistance you'll see $136,000,000 in development assistance last year, from Canada to Malley for various projects. Which puts us as one of the top, donors to that country. Many people in Mali have over the years have studied in Canada And, we've got a considerable community of Mallions living in Canada. And in Quebec, for example, you see a lot of Maui students throughout university and CGF system.
So these are important links that are established over over time, of course, and work to Canada's benefit in that country. On the mining side, Fekola is 1 of the largest of the 5 Canadian mines, and, the Canadian embassy puts the value of Canadian mining investment now over $3,000,000,000. So we're a major, major player in the mining sector, particularly at the gold sector in, in Malley. There's some 15 juniors and gold producers now in the country. Turning to the Philippines, of course, the country close to my heart.
Again, a very strong economy, what's remarkable with the Philippines now is they're running 7 straight years of growth in excess of 5%. So we're working in a very buoyant economy, one with modest inflation but with steady growth, along with China, the 2 fastest growing economies in Asia. The government's priming the economy with its build, build, build program. This has been a focus of President Duterte in order to create jobs and economic activity and deal with major infrastructure challenges in the country as anyone who spent time in Manila will appreciate the congestion in terms of traffic and etcetera. The 3rd bullet just described some of the president's agenda.
This is for the second half of his 6 year term. He's got 3 years left. And a particular focus on, pro poor initiatives, bringing people out of poverty, some significant gains to be made in the Philippines, where people have moved up, on economic scale and moved out of poverty in the last several years. The next slide on the government relations side, we again have a very strong executive team as I see across all the mining operations In the case of the Philippines led by Chris Acosta Danmoore, Gloria Climaco, who are with us today and who've made a very important contribution in respect of keeping very good relations at the national level, the local level, the regional level and into the Philippines Congress. We also want to highlight the DNR secretary, Roy Cemato.
This is like the minister of environment and natural resources of the Philippines who's visited our mind and was very supportive of what we're doing, including very positive comments on the environmental side mine rehabilitation, for example. So in a complex mining environment, B2Gold stands out as a model for responsible investment and president Duterte has said specifically publicly that Canada and Australia are the models that he most respects for responsible mining and responsible mining investment in the Philippines. So that's something that for us, of course, is of significance. The next slide, just, on the higher level relationship as people who travel around Canada will appreciate The Filipino community in this country is growing and growing rapidly there, the fastest growing in Canada. And, they also have the lowest unemployment rate in Canada.
So among immigrant communities, they've adapted the best to our country and, have managed to integrate very, very well. I'll just say a couple words on trade and investment significant trade figures with the Philippines, and the investment numbers also impressive $2,100,000,000 in Canadian investment. It then includes the Masbate operation We've also got major investments in insurance, telecoms, and IT. So we're very well and very prominent in that country. I'll just turn to Namibia.
On the government relations side, president Ganga, last week, was reelected as president, with the majority support, free and fair elections, and in international context, what's really nice to see was a lack of violence a lack of tension in those elections that Namibians voted peacefully and, reelected the the president for another term. The president's very appreciative of B2Gold's investment. We met him in New York recently, and he spoke about having visited the mind region and feeling the impact of what B2Gold has done in terms of job creation in terms of generating more housing opportunities for people in 1 of the more depressed regions of the country. So He does genuinely appreciate our investment and very open team, as is mentioned, Mark Daw, Country Manager, and Managing Director, leads a very seasoned team and one that has very good networks into the government and also works closely within the Libyan Chamber. This is important because the chamber as the lead organization, the Chamber of Mines, addresses
issues with
the government of Namibia, including tax proposals as they emerge. Nice photo of air. This is a NGO project that supports young children, and this is funded by B2Gold in Namibia. It's called Lifeline Child Line. And just a quick word on Canada and Libya relations, obviously not a relationship that people may be generally conscious of, but We do have a very strong relation, reputation, Vichagoul as an investor.
And as a Canadian investor, we benefit from a very warm, sentiment towards Canada, which has been in place for many, many years. If you go back to the 1970s, particularly 1980s, under, prime minister's Trudeau and Mulroni, the Canadian government was very engaged in supporting independence process in Namibia leading up to full independence in 1990. And that hasn't been forgotten because the same, forces that we supported at that time in terms of trying to develop a plan towards independence, Canada was part of the contact group. Those same individuals are now the leaders of Namibia, including President Geindog, of course. So they do speak very fondly of that, and they appreciate the support of Canada And today, of course, B2Gold is a very important player.
The last bullet is significant, and I was told this by the Canadian High Commissioner in South Africa that in fact, our direct investment in Namibia is greater than in South Africa. And that's primarily because of mining investments. So we are a very important player in that economy. And finally a quick look at Colombia, again, robust economic growth about 3% growth this year, 3% inflation, the government of president Duque is very interested in foreign investment, including in the mining sector, and they have made overtures internationally and they're very active at PDAC and around the world to promote investment in this sector. We benefit, of course, when again, a very strong management team at Gramalote as, as, as, Bill has mentioned, Dale Craig, will be our country manager in Colombia with extensive experience in Peru and Nicaragua previously.
And we have strong community support for the project in Grand Malodi. This is very important in Columbia because of the influence of communities on mining investment and mining decisions. And we do benefit from a project in a mining community, and in a in a department to Antioch that has a long tradition of mining. And for the final slide, again, just on the high level relationship, I will mention the Columbia has been a key partner of Canada And South America for a number of years. We benefit from the free trade agreement that was signed in 2011 came into force.
We're also negotiating a free trade agreement with what's called the Pacific Alliance Grouping which brings in Columbia, Chile, Mexico and Peru. Under the free trade agreement, 98% of good Canadian goods exported to Columbia are now tariff free. So this is an advantage for the investor, but also for Canadian exporters. Our investment in the country is among the highest of any country It's over $5,000,000,000, and we have about $1,700,000,000 in trade. Our investment mostly is in mining, energy, Natural Services.
Scotiabank, of course, is one of the leading banks in, in Columbia. And we benefit from a double tax treaty, air transport agreement, and more than 100 companies are represented in Columbia. So overall, a very strong relationship, I think, would set the stage for the Gramalote project. Thank you very much
Thanks, Neil. Thanks, gentlemen. So at this point, I'd like to open up floor to questions. If anyone has a question, please wait for the microphone to come over to you for for those on the webcast. There's one here and there is a 2 microphones on either side of the podium.
So if there are any questions for any of the speakers or any of the topics that were discussed, please? Yes, of course. Yeah, no, Q and A sessions will continue throughout the day, and also after the, after the presentation.
Thank you all very much for your presentations. Very helpful. And, Bill, maybe just a question for you. And, on the 5 year guidance, it's very helpful. I think it's the first time you do all this, provided that type of guidance.
I mean, it it seems to me that, there's certainly upside to that. So is this to be thought of as sort of like a a bare minimum? And, and then is, is the right way to think of that 2019 is sort of peak year over the next 5 years, and it it will be a little bit lower as a as a base case. Over 2021 to 2024? Thanks.
Okay. The answer is, no, you shouldn't necessarily think of it as a minimum. Based on our existing life of mine plans. So every year in June, our life of mines are updated. And that's just the 2019 life of mine over the next 5 years.
So Yes, there's absolute upside for sure, but there's also there's also some, uncertainty in the sense that you've got to develop the Fekola expansion on the underground as well.
And and then just the second part, I mean, is it is it right to think of it as the the average for 2021 to 20 24 of being 15,000 to 25,000 ounces less than 2022? Is there a fair bit of variability in there?
There's a fair bit of variability in that for sure.
Okay. Thank you.
You're right. We haven't typically guided for that many
years out.
But we don't forget we've been in this growth profile for 10 years. So we're getting to the point now where pretty steady state with the 3 core assets, albeit expanding. Fekola here pretty rapidly. But this is partly our response to, because of the expansion, we did have some feedback with people saying, okay, so you got 3 great years in front of you. With Fekola at 600,000 ounces.
And so what happens after that? Do you drop dramatically in gold production? That's why we wanted to get out that based on our current, all of all of our current life of mine projections, we see ourselves for having this very solid 5 years at around a 1,000,000 ounces of gold a year. That's by no means the end of it. In fact, the mine life, so if you look at Masbate, it's a minimum of 8 years.
And then many years of, processing tailings and things after, but very solid, mildly, very solid, long, plus in your my life at, Fekola, and, we're looking at around 7, years 6 or 7 years of Otjikoto as we go expect to transition into underground there as well. The billing, I think it's really important to urge people to remember is that if you look at it, go back to the one of the slides I used earlier, the growth profile, I mean, look at what we've done in 10 years from 0 gold production to a 1,000,000 as a year. Even our extraordinarily successful exploration team, our great, acquisitions team and our very strong balance sheet and cash position, you don't have to really, step outside the box too much to imagine that this group is going to continue to grow the company. Now we're fortunate because in the pipeline, as we said, we've got 2 projects. It could be very near term impact, impact, near term impact players.
And that would be the expansion of Focal III, the expansion of Fekola, the Gramalote project and also the Anaconda area. So I find it really hard to believe that with everything we've got, we're doing, and the way we do things that we're not going to continue to grow the company. So that's where we wanted to make sure people understand what we're trying to do here. And after all these years of growth, it would be a bit unlike me and the whole group to suddenly stop growing the company. So we have the we have the benefit over many companies to being able to, we think, grow from existing assets.
That's a real bonus.
Quebec?
Again, thanks again for providing the 5 year guidance. Give us a lot of confidence in what you're looking for in the next couple of years. But just looking at 2020, Obviously, you guys had some great success in terms of Fekola, in terms of exploration on that. That's fine. We're going to exceed expansion.
But you guys have finished the pit pushback, I believe, for phase 4 that we saw that when we were there at site. High grades were expected to come in since the mill has been doing well and the gold price you guys have been running in low grade stockpiles. When do we start seeing that high grade kick in? I mean, are you looking for to kind of coincide with expansion?
I would say there's going to be a Fekola presentation. Let's save it for that, but certainly we go through all the phasing of the of the pits for 2020 at Fekola.
Okay. And I guess I'll I'll continue, but, just wanted to ask some more questions on Masbate then. Masbate again, Montana Wayne kicked in as well in 2019. Is that going to have contribution in 2020? Is there additional permits required there as well?
I would say once again, let's wait till Masbada. The answer is will be mining in Masbate or in Montana in 2020 for sure.
Okay. I'll leave my questions then for when we get there.
Oh, it looks like Don DeMarco from National Bank.
Thank you, gentlemen. So you mentioned that the sequencing that you had in mind, although it's very preliminary at this point, would be to after the Fekola expansion move to Gramalote and then maybe Anaconda after that. Can you give us, well, preliminary, like, any kind of flavor for what the CapEx might be at Gramalote or in magnitude or something like that?
Well, the some of the work the previous work done by AGA and some more our own modeling work was looking at somewhere around $800,000,000 to $900,000,000 potential cap costs, including around, up close to $200,000,000 for a fleet as part of that. And that's the concept of if the PEA came out in January and then subsequent to that, the infill drilling and the final feasibility by the end of the year, next year, if it continues to hold true to some of the economics that we've seeing a much better economics. You might be looking at producing around 450,000 ounces a year or something like that, for a small plus 10 year mine life. So we're we'll be able to we'll be able to give you much more detail in January when we come up with a preliminary economic assessment. That's going to have a lot of work done recently with Dennis and the team and with AGA on updating mining costs and all those things.
So we'll have a really good, I think, and a very advanced PEA. This is the only reason it's a PEA is because there's a significant amount of the resource that's in the inferred category. It's actually very advanced terms of metallurgy, engineering, permitting, social programs. This is why this thing can kick off really quickly if the feasibility study is positive, in which we frankly fully effect. In fill drilling is always some risk involved, but this is a fairly homogeneous ore body, that geologist tell me.
So we're not expecting surprises there. We'll know soon. So we'll have much more to tell you in January?
We'll look forward to that then. And so the $800,000,000 to $900,000,000 CapEx historical figures for the total life of mine CapEx through the sustaining CapEx and all that?
Yeah. I'm not going to get too far into that right now. So I think you're best to wait to generate to put it in your model because you'll have a lot, you'll have a lot more information of, of how we see it then. But we haven't seen a dramatic, I mean, Dennis is redoing and AGA, the capital cost numbers we haven't seen a dramatic increase over that. But the economics, they looked good.
So let's, let's find out, let's prove it out, and that's mainly the function of inventory drilling, but January you'll have lots of stuff to build the model off.
Okay. If they're if they're is there a question from Chris pardon me? Chris Thompson from, PI Securities.
Just a quick question on the dividend. How should we be looking at the dividend moving forward, obviously a lot of growth, a lot of good things. But maybe just talk to how what sort of positioning how would you position the dividend? On a forward looking basis?
Well, I guess, maybe I'll go first of all, but the, I mean, it's pretty, it's a reasonable level dividend, especially I think it's a starting position. It's probably in the mid packed with gold producers. A few of them like Ignacio have increased them just recently. But I think it's a reflection of, of the fact that we're always had this objective. As I said, if you can be successful in our business and generate lots of cash flows, you take some of it and continue to grow your business, which I think I showed us very much want us to do and take some of it reward the shareholders with the dividend.
So, going looking forward, we'd like to see that dividend increase over time. Of course, part of the issue there is are you doing with your cash flow? What are you building at the time? Are you expanding a mine, etcetera, etcetera. So clearly, we have an avenue to a lot of, additional capability to fund through very, very low cost debt.
We have other facility in place. So it's always a balancing act going forward. So we didn't want to jump on it too hard and start a dividend that you can't that you have issues continuing in the future. You never want to do that. So we started it when I think it's a reasonable level.
It's been very well received by generous funds and by the gold funds as well. Our vision and our hope is to grow the dividend. Obviously, it's going to be balancing act, because you're looking at things like Gramalote and Anaconda and things like that. It doesn't mean we can't increase the dividend we grow the company. That would be our advantage, our goal.
But if you understand it,
it's too late now, I guess. I don't agree.
Set. Thank you. So if there's no further questions with that, we'll move on to our next panel. Oh, sorry. Jody?
That's Jody Mark from, Haywood Securities. He'll defer his question till later. So, so that concludes his first panel on your schedule. Everybody will be available for questions throughout the afternoon. And, of course, later on after the, formal session has ended, At this time, we'd like to bring up, our, our, colleagues from Fekola And that includes, Mohammed Dara, who is the, country manager, Raimed, who's the mine manager, and Andy Brown, who is the exploration manager for Africa.
They'll be updating you on a little bit more detail that the initial panel went through. We're starting with, Muhammad Dira, Country Manager.
Good afternoon. My name is Mohammed Dara.
I'm the
country manager for B2Gold Mali. So today, I'm just going to take you to just a general presentation about, Malio operations and tell you about, the general overview on, Mali, we can give you a political aspect of Malia at the moment, security, and also a lot of people have questions about the mining code. So I'll try to touch on that a bit. So this is just like to talk to you about what Mali's, generally located. So it's in the West Coast of Africa.
So you'll have, it's got 7 borders. Fekola project is situated at, on the West Coast, the West, Side of Mali's by the border of, Senegal. So a lot of us, it's a big country scale, but 1.2000000 Square Kilometers. And, you'll have, lots of, like, all the traffic coming through Malley comes through because the landlocked country comes from Senegal. Gine.
So but we have most of the Guinea, Ivory Coast. I'm sorry. But most of our traffic, for Fekola comes from Senegal. As of today, we're using most sort of the, for the traffic, going to Malawi. We do we have an s trip on-site.
So using the airstrip as a privileged, Main of Transportation to get to Fekola. So, it's a lot to say about the political overview, but I'm trying to summarize this in, just like a few points. So we we have a good stability as far as government goes at the moment. The president elected is, Ibrahim, BUva Carcata, This is a second mandate. So it's just been reelected and it's going to ground until 2023.
Earlier this year, I mean, this is a picture of last year with Clive and the president for, the opening of the May. The second picture is the picture of Clive with, the the the minister of Mines who was actually on-site to, open the new Fadoogoo. We'll talk about Fadoogoo a little bit after that. But the thing that the the main questions that lots of you guys may, you know, may have is, related to the mining code. So Fekola is elected to go on the 2012 mining code.
Been saying that, you know, over the past few years, but just this year, we had, like, a decree, a proposed decree by the Ministry of Mines to to go to a newer mining code. So that mining code is actually, an attempt to kind of like, regulate a little bit of the difference, disparities that we have between, like, the 99 minuteing code, the 2000 99, ended 2012 mining code, and we also have a 91 mining code. So the newer mining code will kind of look at different aspect of, fiscal aspect and those type of things. But, since we decided to go to 2012 minutee Code, we already had we're closer in terms of what's in the new mining world. We're closer to what the government is expected.
So we B2Go has been a really good, let's say, good student in brackets saying that, you know, government is really pressing the our approach saying that we're responsible than the way we've been looking at making things move forward. So, that the new mining code doesn't really affect any of activities. We've been, under the stability close. And, we think that, discussed with the minister, she's already confirmed to us that we have no, there's no impacts whatsoever on what we're doing at the moment. So this is just to give you, like, an idea of what's going on.
Besides, we have a very good relationship with, the Ministry of Mines, Ministry of Finance. And the prime minister's office. Okay. So As far as security, I think this is, you know, I'm just trying to guess what you guys may have as questions. I mean, what's in in mind when you say Moli today, after the mining code, which is, as big on people's, you know, mines, got security aspect as well.
So just to let you know that where we see traded at the moment, as far as, like, the west part of the country, we never had any, big incident. I mean, it never had any incident what's ever. As far as far as security, we never had any terrorist attack, no foreign expats, kidnapping, anything like that. But, it we're still being very cautious on what we're doing. So we, the government is we have different ways of looking at security.
So you have, the government may approach to it, and then you have the international forces, and then you have what we do in Valley. So government is very, very, very aware of what's going on, and they're really trying to do lots of efforts to secure, like, all the companies and foreign investments. So we've been having lots of discussion with them, good relationship with the Ministry of Security. Also, when it comes to, local security when the region of, because we have in the region of Kai, we have a good relationship with the governor and knowledge on the arms and security out there. And, BTGOLD is also trying to make as much as possible to secure all these employees.
So, As far as security today, we are aware of security threats, but we're making all the efforts to make sure that all our personalizations and expatriates are all secured on-site in in Bamako. So going back to new Fadeau, we have a couple of, initiative when it comes to communities, social relations. And, new Fadougou was a big, very big project for us over the past few months. We just completed it earlier in 2018. So we were able to move about 913, household to a new area with all of the the new, I mean, facilities when you have new health system.
It's what we call the SESCOM. It's like, health clinic that kind of, outs out there to help all the villagers to responds to, you know, any health issues and also maternity issues. So we've been able to build a school, a mosque. We had, like, public lightning and also have, like, water holes and things like that to make sure that the community gets all the profit, what's needed in the community. So just to let you know, the project was a very dynamic, project.
So we had to discuss with all the villagers to make sure that old, what they were needed, what they wanted and what's what's needed was actually properly addressed, and nothing was done in a way that we imposed anything to anybody. It was more like it was a consensual discussion and agreements that were able to move to a new area. That was the old Fadougou, and this is a new Fadougou. There was quite a change on that. So a couple of other initiatives from B2Gold.
So we have, had a we have a partnership unicef. It's a livelihood project. So we they we'll try to do a 3 year partnership to develop, a partnership with UNICEF Canada and provide a better future for children. So this project will, actually target, like, in the artisanal community the children that are being used in the, you know, to kind of like mine and, to some small scale mining, we're trying to get them to get more education and those type of things. So A lot of those issues are related to lack of education and those type of things.
And if we believe that if we can contribute to education on a very very early on, we can probably change the future of those children. And last but not least, we've also initiated a signature project. So also, this is going to be a project that will try to do for 5 years. So this is actually something what we wanna do a sustainable development project, not wait until the end of the mine, but start rather early. And do some kind of like, complex agricultural comp, project where we can have, training for the guys, for people with no possibility opportunities to learn the trade while mining, in Fekola.
And, once they, instead of having to do, artisanal mining, they have an opportunity to do, agriculture and, also we'll look at, live, you know, livestock and do a little bit of processing meets and different things like that. So right now it's in the project. We're doing the terms of references. But probably by next year, we'll probably have the the first few, The project will probably start next year. So that's basically what I wanted to say.
And, thank you for attention.
Thank you, Mo. We'll, we'll have a Q and A session directly after the rest of the Fekola presentation, but for now, I'd like to introduce Ray Mead, who is the general manager of Fekola, formerly general manager of Masbate. So some of you may know Ray, just now he's wearing a different hat.
Thanks Ian.
I've
been at the cola now for about 5 months, so really, just getting my feet under the desk. Hoping to continue on. Obviously, the good work done by Randy and his team initially, with the startup operation So we'll run you through, basically where we are at this stage. This is a timeline, slide And I think one of the the things to take out of this and it's been a constant message from Clive and And the rest of the executive group is that, B2Gold don't sit still, from acquisition of the project in 2014, through to where we are now in 2019, there's been quite a few quantum shifts in, in the way the project's been looked at, even during initial construction, decision were made to increase the capacity of the mill from 4000000 to 5000000 ton per annum, as we came to understand the project more, through commissioning in 2017, 3 months ahead of ahead of our construction schedule. And then, straight into achieving commercial production before the end of that year.
In 2018, certainly after the good work done by the exploration group and increased mineral resource was was posted, And again, the group looked at what we had ahead of us then and the expansion study was approved towards the end of, 2009 in October. So this is where we are now from a, PEA, posted in March of 2019. On the new, resource model, which was put out in 2018, we came up with an 11 year mine life at an optimized mining rate, 74,400,000 tons per annum, That'll be a peak rate, that includes all pre stripping, as we move through the 10 stages of mining. The mill similarly will see, an expansion or an increase in throughput taking it from a nominal 6,000,000 ton per annum, which is a rate that it's been able to achieve after commissioning and the likes. Up to somewhere around 7,500,000 tons per annum.
The construction process, started on-site in October, again, you can see quite rapid progress from engineering through to boots on the ground and and construction starting to occur, milling life of 12 years. The first, again, there's been a bit of a focus on on 5 years. Our 1st 5 years on the expanded rate and the increased mining mining rates puts us at about an average of 550,000 ounces per per annum, and then average across the life of mine of 400,000. Overall expected gold production as we know it now is about 5,000,000 ounces, but again from Tom and you'll hear from from Andy. A bit later on, exploration is still ongoing further to the north.
And we'll do an updated life of mine, out in quarter 12020. 2019 to date. Just on the left of that slide, there's a small table of details. One of the key takeaways from that, you'll you'll notice that 2019 CapEx has considerably increased from earlier guidance up to 136,000,000. That just reflects the mill expansion, the mining fleet, new equipment and also the solar farm.
There's some of this capital in 2019. There's also a carryover into 2020 as we we finish off the bulk of these projects. 2020 production at 600,000 ounces thereabouts. 600 to 620, and then the mineral reserve and resource estimates, in the bottom corner. Currently, end of third quarter, we're about 7% above where we expected to be, from a gold production perspective that obviously has, positive influences on our cash costs and all in sustaining costs.
We expect to finish the year between 445,455,455, 1000 ounces. It's been fairly evenly spread quarter by quarter. We initially thought that we'd have a heavier second half of the year, but just the way we've ramped up the mill throughputs through the earlier part of the year, as we've started to test and and look at the engineering that we were doing on construction. So changed the profile a little bit, but not too much out of balance. So as I said, we're having a good solid year and expect to finish, as guided.
That guidance was increased at theendofthethirdquarter. So full year, we'll be moving about 40,000,000 tons, 40,500,000 tons, total movement out of the pits, waste tons, a bit over 32,000,000 tons of waste between 7.98.2000000 tons of ore. The grade range is 1.75to1.85 and strip ratio of 4 to 4 point 1. The mill again, as mentioned by a couple people, Mike, I think distinctly We've got we've increased the milling rate, through the year. We are not modifying what we're doing from a mining perspective at the moment.
We're actually feeding in some of the lower grade stockpiles through the year. So what you would have noticed is a drop off in, feed grade, but with the significant increase in throughput, we've sort of done better than budget. Recoveries, we've been able to keep them, unaffected by the increased throughput We've had some softer oil blends that we've been able to manage early on and then just a relationship, towards the end of the year just to maintain recoveries. So this is our 2019 pit. The brown areas are the areas of that we're concentrating on this this year.
Phase 4 is our predominant ore source. We're diving down quite deep in phase 4 and phase 5 is a large pre strip area but is producing, some ore as well. This now differs into the 2020, pit profiles. Again, the the brown area is the large, pre strip area. This is this is one of the main reasons for bringing in the fleet that we've selected, into, 1st quarter 2020.
We're bringing in a lot larger mining equipment. There's there's, quite a bit of pre strip there to do. So we have an unity to bring in larger, larger equipment to, to move the, material more efficiently. Phase 5 continues and phase 4 is also a predominant ore source through the year. Okay.
So for next year, this is where we look to be 65,000,000 tons. We don't hit our peak mining rate next year because we stagger the, introduction of the new equipment. From quarter 1, quarter 2, into quarter 3, and we finish, new equipment additions by first quarter of 2020 1. The mill throughput sits about 6,800,000 tons slightly less than what the upgraded expansion capacity will be mainly because we're working, in amongst construction crews. So there's several tie in requirements through the year.
The expanded plant doesn't become available till the end of Q2 into Q3. So there's there's impacts on production through the first half of the year. We have, however, managed to, come up with a set of production profile, 6 100, 620,000 ounces. Just to show that we like keeping busy, we've also taken on a TSF lift the same time and decided to do that, as a double lift, one of the main reasons for that is we're in a good position in the pit to produce bulk waste to do a lot of that, lift of the of the TSF. So we have an opportunity to to get some short hauls out of the pit and to move a lot of the waste, into the buttressing of the TSF.
So we'll be going up to 185.2 meters, which will give us around about 3 years of, TSF capacity, and that'll be finished, certainly in the first half of twenty twenty. On the capital front, the construction projects obviously take precedents. They're quite capital heavy in the first half of the year, as we round off the, the mill upgrade, the solar project the mining fleet and the TSF race. As mentioned, the 4 major projects, the mill expansion is 1,500,000 tonne normal, additional capacity, 30 megawatts of solar, hybrid solar battery, power, plant being installed, mining fleet expansion, and the raising of the TSF, as mentioned for for a 3 year, capacity, improvement. We've got the, the, capital cost breakdowns On this slide, 50,000,000 for the mill expansion, thereabouts, 38,000,000 for the solar farm, 87,000,000 in mining fleet, of which 40,000,000 of that will be, pushed through our cap loan facility.
On the new equipment specifically, We're currently running 777s and 60 20 diggers. We're taking a jump up in size. Now we're running 789 haul trucks to move a lot of the waste, and we'll couple them with sixty-forty, front shovels, to strip the waste. Along with that obviously comes additional drilling capacity requirements those are requirements and the usual ancillary equipment. So it's a steady ramp up through 2020 as equipment arrives.
We've already had first equipment starting to arrive on-site now, so it'll go through assembly. And will be working before in first quarter in 2020. The mill upgrade is really, the major power upgrade is through the ball mill where ball mill limited we we run a finer grind at Fekola than we do at some of the other operations to maintain recovery. So The sag mill has been, sized correctly as as I think Clive mentioned right from the beginning, we we look at the engineering, and try and make sure we have have room room to move as as we develop. So the Saginaw doesn't need to be touched.
The, ball mill structurally doesn't need to be touched, but we just increased power, through the motors. Then the other increases line slaking, is just really a production improvement, cyclone clusters, additional leach tank to maintain residence time, larger pebble crushers again just to handle, the higher throughput rates, larger pumps, and the like. So At this stage, everything, to do with mill expansion, all long lead time items have been ordered everything is on schedule. The construction crews have been mobilizing the site over the past few months as as, they've been required. So everything, certainly on on target, on budget, moving into 2020.
The solar power plant, this has been on Adenos' babies, from concept through to where we are now, it's going to take up occupying error about 76 hectares on-site to the east of where the current plant sits. We've already cleared that ground. Done all the grubbing. We've had the contractors that are developing the the solar farm come to site looking at what we have on the ground to minimize cut and fill so we can minimize, earthworks and rearrange some of the panel, arrays. The orders, the selection of tenders, have all been done.
So we expect quite a heavy ramp up of activity on the solar farm beginning of 2020, and expect to have solar power capacity by quarter 3 2020. Major impact on our, operating costs, minimum 7% we believe will take off the top the battery backup, and the forecasting processes that have been, put into this plant, make it, capable of being more efficient than than a typical, solar plant we should be able to run a lot leaner on our HFO plants while we operate on solar power without risk of blackout or losing power because We have a significant, battery storage. And with that I'll hand you over to Andy.
Thanks, Ray. Andy Brown, African exploration manager. He'll take you through the Fekola exploration update. And as many of you saw, we put out a press release this morning with some pretty impressive results from both the Fekola infill and the Anakon area. Thanks,
Ian.
Good afternoon, everybody. Okay. We'll start with an overview of our projects in West Africa. We're going to focus on Fekola the most part this afternoon and our regional projects at Anaconda. But, we have been active, this year in Burkina Faso, some early age programs in and around the Kiaki deposits, and to WAGA.
And, very latest part of this year, we actually initiated a small drill program on our early stage project in Ghana, indicated by the, the buoy belt. But with, just over 114,000 meters drilled in Mali, this year, Molly continues to be the focus of our exploration in West Africa. This is our geological overview slide. And any of you that have seen this presentation in the last couple of years. You've seen this slide to come back to it.
It speaks to gold endowment in the region. It's a big part of why we continue to spend so much of our exploration budget in this part of West Africa, and continue, I think, by and large, to get, rewarded with good drill results as a result of it, Golden Dowman, the Proterozoic in West Africa, in the order of 10,000 metric tons or 320 some odd 1,000,000 ounces. Our little window of that that part of the paleoprotorozoic, the KNEB inlier straddling the border between, Senegal and Mali and, principally the Senegal Maui Shear zone, which you can see running up along the, right side of that map and the yellow area. Know the position of Fekola on the south end, Gankoto, Yolea, Lulu to the north of us. Again, this is strong local endowment of gold and, large part of the reason that we continue to explore here.
Moving into our properties, You can see the in the south, the, Mednani permit, which is the, where the Fekola mine is is located itself, the outline of the pit, in blue there. 75 Square Kilometers is a large license. Much of it is still relatively unexplored. If you look at the extent of the goal of pit there, And the, what I would say is relatively untested extent to the north of the pit, you can see just what size that property is. And because we've spent such since a great amount of time exploring in and around the Fekola Pit itself.
There's still lots of exploration upside on the Metanandi license. To the north, approximately 15 to 20 kilometers, depending where you are, the men meningota South permit, which is home to our anaconda deposits, and its sister property to the north, Bentaco North, which was recently acquired, adding potential strike length to the known resources at Anaconda. Both of these have been very active this year, and much of our exploration is focused on the combined, Menacoto and Vitaco North permits, as you'll see later on. Recap where objective for 2019. We had, $20,500,000 to spend an exploration this year.
The majority of that I would say was, directed at the Fekola self where objective was to upgrade much of the inferred, resources in the Fekola Pit indicated, which we completed some of our exploration push north of the pit will talk a bit more about that later and that will continue to be a big focus in 2020. We initiated drilling on the cardinal structure, which is just west Fekola Pit, you'll see in the next, the next map I have coming up here. Obviously, we've been very busy at Anaconda, Mamba, COBRA. These are the targets that that, that there are, target areas out in the, Minnesota South license that comprise the overall Anaconda resource that we've been talking about the last couple of years. And elsewhere, our regional programs in South Maui advances here.
There's still 2 permits there of interest to us that are still quite early stage. Both are, relatively relatively early stage compared to the work we're doing in and around Fekola, but will be the subject of further exploration next year. Coming into, map of the Fekola region, geology map on the right there, you can see the long linear belt of gray sediments right up the middle there. You can see the outline of the Fekola pits. These gray sediments are the host lithology to the Fekola deposit.
We're showing some of the regional targets on the license, of more immediate interest to us are the cardinal and FMZ. You can see just off to the left hand side of the Cola pit there, subject to some of our drilling this year, about 7500 meters completed at Cardinal and, FMZ, which stands for Fadoogu Maine zone. Some of the conceptual targets that we've been wanting to test, in recent years, but, have only recently got to based on our focus on the Fekola deposit itself. You can see in the north end, something we call eagle. And then just to the south, something we call hair and we late late this year.
We managed to get some holes into each of these targets and are extremely encouraged, by the presence of Fekola types, retigraphy, and alteration so you're going to see this become a bit of a focus in the in the year ahead as we step out and do a lot more regional exploration looking for the extent of the Fekola shears on north. And south of us, keep in mind that not too far south along what is arguably the same structure as the voter deposit. Key notable cardinal and FM Zed combined, although these are slightly geologically different, in terms of host structures. So, the Fekola deposit itself, the drilling we've done to date this year, again, about 7500 Meters. Has shown us satisfactory continuity, and we think we might have the makings of a small near surface resource there.
Obviously gonna be a subject of further work next year. Moving on to a long section through the Fekola deposit. As I said, the, the bulk of our our work Fekola this year, just over 22,000 meters was focused on bringing the inferred portion of the deposit, to indicated status. So, looking looking to the north, you can see the reserve pit outlined in green. The area of focus has been north of that or to the right of that line north to the blue line on the end, which is our 1400, gold, mineral resource pit.
That encompasses that that area encompasses much most of the 1,370,000 ounces of inferred, that we had announced at the end of the 2018 drill program. So that is now all drilled, mostly drilled indicated status, and the resource, estimate is underweight on that and should be ready, shortly. We did some drilling at the south end. See, you see that little dip in the blue of the of the, PEA pit on the south end, that area we call Fekola South
this
is a little bit lower grade than the main massive of coal deposit. We did have some success there, but more importantly, infill drilling is gonna allow us to bring some of those is up to indicated status as well. Looking at some of the highlights, from this year's drilling, announced earlier this year. If you look at the deepest portions, it'll be hard to see. I'll I'll call them out for you.
Very deepest portions of that 1400 pit, FKD 413, 3.9 grams over almost sixty meters. FKD 415, 2.98 grams over 43.9 meters. There are exceptionally good grade width combinations of the deepest levels of this 1400 pit. So, further indication that this the system has great legs about 3200 Meters of continuous mineralization end to end and open to the north, looking north of the pit off to the right side. You won't make not be able to make that out.
FKD 431, 1.4 grams over almost thirty meters. So good indications that this structure continues to the north, and will certainly be the subject of further drilling in the new year. Moving to the Anaconda region. Or 45,000 meters drilled there this year. That is the the culmination of some of our reconnaissance auger holes that cover the extent of the new license of Entaco and any portions of the the men and koto license itself that hadn't been covered.
But you can see the breakdown Mamba and acondas are excuse me, the mamba and the ata ata structures, which are part of the greater anaconda resource that we re re released a couple of years ago, 700 and 67,000 ounces of inferred at just over a gram. And keep in mind that that that resource, which stops stopped essentially the property boundary between Minankoto and Ventaco. You can see as the east west line in, orange coloration there, but, threw up from the bottom. So 4 a half kilometers of mineralization there, we've now added potential for further 2 kilometers at least on Ader, that's been drilled out adding up to a kilometer. And on the Mamba structure up to six hundred meters, you can see, based on the distribution of drill results that both of those structures continue to be open to the north.
Not shown on the map, the Cobra, target, which is, further off to the, east. If you recall, presentation from last year, we were looking at conceptual targets down there looking for the presence of, sulfide type mineralization at depth. And although we did only a small amount of drilling there, we did get some nice proof of concept hits, eight meters at, three point six grams and nineteen meters 1.3 grams. So that's something we hope to get back to in the new year and, continue on with that hard rock exploration there. Turning to the mamba, in the long section, this is, this has been the big story for us this year.
Again, something in the order of 14,000 meters of drilling completed. We're looking at a, west looking along section here, and you can see the marks southerly plunge to the mineralization. And important here, know the saprolite and the sulfide boundary, fairly deep. This is a this is a composite schematics section is to say we're we're projecting on to a vertical section here, a fairly complicated structure, but what is what is obvious is this pronounced sotherly plunge and the good continuity between the high grade and the saprolite and the sulfide below that transitional boundary, picking out a couple of the highlights from the saprolite on the on the, what would be the north side, BNR 3, two grams over fifty five meters. If you follow that down plunge, you you can see some of the hits we've had recently in the qualified below that, MSD 177, 2.6 grams over 35.6 meters, and MSD 179,4.9 grams over 31 meters.
This is this is beginning to look like what we've been talking about in terms of looking for a Fekola type target at Anaconda, it's very tempting to say that at this point that the the saprolite resource we have is merely the icing on the cake But, still early days and a lot of drilling left to be done to fully understand the structure here. Excuse me, looking ahead to 2020. Proposed budget, you'll see there is about $18,000,000. So you have to be approved, but again, another really strong year for, exploration in the Fekola region. Our goals are going to be to push north of of Fekola as discussed, targets like, eagle and Aaron to the south.
We obviously have additional drilling too. The cardinal and FM Zen zones. Our goal would be to bring those to the initial resource status. Plenty of drilling left to infill at Mamba, to, a, understand, the main controls on that mineralization, and then ultimately bring it to a initial resource stage, Anaconda, remaining drilling to do there. Much of the drilling at Anaconda proper, that is to that's the zone just to the south of the outer structure, where the main the bulk of the saprolite mineralization is hosted.
We've done very little to define an underlying hard rock resource there. So that's something we're gonna look be looking at, in 2020. Adder, as mentioned, we've got almost a kilometer strike and extent to close off there. So, that'll that'll also see extensive drilling in the new year. And with that, I will move on to the question and answer first.
Thanks, Andy. Thanks, gentlemen. Great presentations. Are there any questions? I see Jordy in the in the back, for for any of the speakers, please.
Put your hand up. This is Geordie Mark from Haywood.
Yeah. Good afternoon all. Yeah. Thanks for that presentation. Just if I can start on Ray, Thanks, mate.
Just, on on the life of mine plan, you projected, there, and I guess we got an update in q 1 next year. What was the cutoff grade used to do differentiate between waste mill there versus what you're doing now? Just implementing your stockpiling strategy, I guess, which I'm just thinking.
Yeah. Sorry. Jody, I'm very, very new to this, I think the cutoff grade's about 0.46, but I stand to be correct that maybe Randy might be able to fill you in on that one.
Yeah. The the cutoff grade is still 0.8, and the, and then we do stockpile down to, 0.65. We've got a stockpile of that as well. Yeah. For processing right now, we're just using our low grade stockpile that that's averaging between 1 and 1.1 gram a ton.
Great. Thank you. And one maybe one for Andy there. Just on the geology on, MANTA and today's results, instead of just looking at the geochemistry of the gold, any other geological parameter parameters that give you confidence on the continuity, going down plunge other than just the geochemistry, just to give us an idea of, you know, where you're seeing confidence in what you're looking for in drilling.
It's, Mob is still primarily a structural target. We're seeing some of the same features. You've seen, I know you've seen both some of the mamba rocks and Fekola deposit. Structural controls are similar. We're still looking at folds as being a primary control for that lunging, type aspect you see.
Fairly convinced there's a structural delineation that play intersection between high strain zones and the host lithology, slightly higher sulfide concentrations in the, in the mamba rocks, I think you might recall from your last visit. So that, that plunge is, we can back that up with with actual structural measurements and we're using that as a target as we bring it south so that's not just a great distribution, we're chasing there, although it's happily, seems to be living up to expectations.
Any, any further questions for the Fekola panel? Well, if not, oh, sorry. There's Barracat from, M Partners.
Just a quick question on, the Mill upgrade. How much downtime do you expect, especially as you, implement the new cycle on cluster? You need to disconnect some pipes, I'm guessing, so the system may to start?
We've got 3 tie ins scheduled for for 2020. We've actually brought one forward and we'll be doing one late this year, in the next week or so. So everything's been considered within our 2020 guidance of 6,800,000 tonnes through the through the mill. So we expect a 10 day shutdown and a 5 day shutdown to get those tie ins through.
Okay. Thanks, gentlemen. Next, I'd like to introduce the Masbate team. That is a country manager Chris Acosta. And, line manager Dan Moore.
Thank you, Ian. I'll provide a short overview of the Philippines where the Masbate gold project is located. The Philippines is in Southeast Asia. It is an archipelago. It consists of more than 7100 islands of which only around 2000 islands are inhabited.
Masbate is located in Central Philippines. The a bit of history, the Philippines was under Spain for more than 330 years. Under the Americans or nights or United States for about 50 years, and it was occupied by Japan for 3 years. So sometimes Filipinos are called Latinos of Asia or brown Americans. The Philippines was granted its independence by the Americans in 1946.
It is a republic with 3 independent branches of government pattern to that of the United States. The president is elected by popular vote, but he has only 1 6 year term. The current precedent will have a term until June 2022. The rest of the officials are also the Philippines is a populous country. It has a population of 108,000,000.
And with the birth rate that we have, let's say, at 2%, we practically produced 2,000,000 babies, Filipino babies every year. The, population density we have is about 3.56 persons per square kilometer. I think comparing to Namibia, I think Namibia has 2 and Canada has 4. The Philippines is a developing country, It has a GDP per capita of around US3 1100 dollars. The GDP grew by 6.2% last year, which is quite good.
The Masbate gold project is located in a coastal town. As such, the fishing industry is an important component of the local economy. We have learned that the, fishing industry in Masbate has been in decline since the mid 1980s. We also recognize that the health of the oceans is key to sustain the fishing industry. As such, we have worked with local communities to improve the health of the coastline.
To this end, we have implemented 2 projects, which I would like to mention to you today. With the help of the local government, we were able to establish a 130 Hector Marine protected area. Within that area, we are trying to restore and have started to restore coral reef. We do this by deploying especially constructed reef balls. The reef balls have, rough surfaces that are seeded with corals.
The balls also have holes for fishes and waves to flow through. The other project we have is the mangrove Breffer Station. We have planted more than 1,100,000 mangrove propagules covering more than 250 hectares. Demand groups and the coral reefs, they serve a spawning area for fish. They also allow marine ecosystems to develop and grow.
During typhoons, they help protect the coastlines from storm surges. They also help reduce erosion. From the communities perspective, they provide opportunities for employment for the residents of the coastal communities. We are now trying to get more involvement from relevant government agencies and university scientists to help ensure that the initiatives that we have started will not only be maintained. But also even further develop.
About a week ago, we were visited by Typhoon Kamuri. The local name is Typhoon Tysoy. It was a large typhoon. It affected at least a third of the country. It hit directly the central Philippines where Masbate is located.
When it passed through Masbate, the eye of the storm was less than fifty miles from the Masbate mine. It was quite strong. But I'm happy to, to say that there were no casualties at the mine site. There was no damage on the major site facilities We stopped the mining activities for 2 days. This is for safety reasons.
And we also stopped the processing plant operations for less than a day. We have been helping our employees and the residents of the host Baron guys who were affected by the typhoon. We continue to monitor their needs and we will do our best to help out and then find ways to help them out.
Thank
you, Chris. I'd like to introduce Dan Moore, my manager of Masbate.
Thank you, Ian. Thanks Ian. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll start off with a, I guess I'll mention first of all, I've been at site about 2 years but I've only been GM for the last 6 months, following Ray. I think it was mentioned earlier that Ray had left for Fekola, and Ray Ray left some, very big choose to fill there and it's done a wonderful job there.
So I'm just hoping to carry on that tradition there. Starting with the timeline, Mazbod is located on the Mazbodie Island right at the north end in the Aeroi gold district. Aeroi gold district has a long history going back 100 of years in large operations. Whoop. Yep.
Sorry about that. Okay. Alright. Now I'm on the right side. Anyway, it goes back, several 100 years and the large operations go back to well before, 2nd World War when the US came in.
Established some more modern operations. Actual modern operations started in 1980 with, Alice Consolidated came in a mine from 1980 to 1994, fairly conventional operation. They mined surface an underground boat At the time they ceased operation, the property changed hands a few times. Ultimately, this slide is missing a bullet. Ultimately, ending up in the hands of CGA sent from that, they built the operation in 2007.
And Ray was actually there for that. So the the current configuration was built in 2007, with 1st gold port in 2009. That was acquired by B2Gold in 2013. And B2 did the first expansion in 2016. Increased leach capacity.
And that year, they were able to establish, production, well in excess of 200,000 ounces a year at 206,000 That was phase 1 of, expansion. 2019 this year, early in the year, the construction was conducted last year. But we, we completed it early this year and taken us up to a capacity of about 8,000,000 tons a year roughly through the mail. It's conventional open pit mining operation. We have very low mining costs there the lowest mining costs.
Certainly, if any operation I've been associated with mining rate, we can, we have the capability of moving about 34,000,000 tons a year. To do that, we have 4 Sandvik, top, top hammer, pantera drill rigs, DP 1500s, I've got 4, excavators in backhoe configuration. 3 of them are Kamatsu PC 2000s. 1 is a PC1250. Those are, bucket size on those about 12 cubic meter or 7 for the smaller 12 50.
We've got 26 cap, 777, trucks in D And E configuration. I've got a very good maintenance group out there. You'll see some of the longest component lives you'll see anywhere in the world there. They do a very good job, very good, very good mining group. Process plant capacity, as mentioned earlier, is about 8,000,000 tons a year.
Very conventional system, CIL, including crushing, two stages of grinding, sagging ball milling, cyanidation carbon adsorption. It's got an AARL carbon plant, stripping plant, and of course, electro winning and gold smelting the grinding circuit consists of an 8.5, Megawatt SAG Mill, 23.6 Megawatt ball mills, And the most recent one, commission this year was a 6 megawatt ball mill. Infrastructure includes a 36 megawatt power plant, that includes 6 Wardzilla generators. In addition to that, we have full port facilities and airport and, of course, a camp to support it. You can see the map on the left side of the slide there.
It shows the location on Port Barrera. So that's at the north end of Moss body Island. And Masbate is pretty centrally located in the Philippines. And that protects us from weather. A lot of times, some of the bigger storms, the, they come in from the east.
And so, Samar is Island to the east and a lot of times, that takes a brunt of the weather. But this time, we got the brunt of it. As Chris mentioned, the typhoon hit us hit us pretty hard, but had, very, very little effect on operation, fairly devastating to the communities, but we are, providing a lot of aid for those people. And and coordinating with all the government jurisdictions to help them as best we can. Because we maintain a non union workforce there, which in the Philippines, it's very unionized, for the most part.
We've got 1900 employees including about 865 direct employees. Very few expats. We've got about 10 expats on-site, including myself. We really maintained good relations with our people. We really strive to do that.
And we won, we've got an Employee engagement committee that was formed when Ray was there. And it's very successful. The employees are able to raise grievances, concerns, requests, directly with management so they actually meet with me and, and a and a group of our managers. And the committee is so successful. We actually won a national award this year, and that's across all of the Philippines, not just across mining.
So we won 1st place. I've got a good safety record there. We've achieved a year without the last time as of the middle of last month. Previous record was about 3 years. So we hope to, to achieve that once again.
We've got an environmental compliance certificate in ISO 14,011,015. And it was mentioned, I think, earlier here. We mined the main vein pits this year, and that was that was it. It was confined to those. But we are starting the Montana pit, and I will commence in, in January for what we're doing, prep work right now, clearing, grubbing, and some grade control drilling.
Fall Mill 3 also mentioned earlier that was commissioned, early this year. Construction was all completed in 2018. Process plant performance, despite the time, the downtime to commission the plant, remains at 8,000,000 tons a year. We also experienced a failure of a sag mill motor, and we took some time to upgrade to some steel liners, which are quite expensive and the downtime was, took a bit of a hit, but they performed very well. Life, life on these liners is very good, and we'll continue to use those.
So even including the downtime for those items, we're able to maintain that. 8,000,000 tons that we feel we will by the end of the year. Oxide ore ratios for the year are higher than budgeted. And, we had sort of a fortuitous circumstance that allowed that to happen. We mined through the end of main vein, and we mined through a number of dumps that Atlas had established, both Atlas mined both surface and underground.
So we mined through a surface dump that was oxide, and a lot of it turned out to be ore. Then we mined through a fair fair number of underground stopes that they had backfilled with oxide material that was waste to them and order us So we were budgeted about 10% total material being oxide and we've encountered about 32%. Recoveries for the year are online pretty much in line with plan, feed grade to the mills, about, almost 10% higher than plan. And that's due to the fact that we have less low grade because we didn't count on and countering this oxide that we found in the dumps, we had planned to move. We've got extensive low grade stockpiles of 30 plus 1,000,000 tons.
And we had planned to move about half our material to the mill was to be low grade and, actuality was only about 20%. So our feed grades have been higher. Cash operating costs and all in sustaining costs remained below budget. As shown on this slide, CLC gold production for about 9%. This is through Q3 by 9% cash operating costs, 14% below budget, all in sustaining costs, 15% below budget.
Cash operating cost, 5.67, and all in sustaining are at 7.73 per ounce. Both of those are well below guidance. CapEx for the year is about $38,000,000 budgeted. That includes capitalized stripping, the last of the mill construction, TSF, tailings and palament construction, equipment rebuilds, equipment purchases and then, land acquisition. So through the through the third quarter, about 167,000 ounces.
So for the full year, we're forecasting through the mill right at about 8,000,000 tons somewhere between 1.051.15 grams per tonne and a recovery rate of 71 to 74. And we're holding our, our guidance at 200,000 to 210,000 ounces. Waste tons should be around 24,000,000 tons. Total tons should be around 32,000,000. So guidance for next year, we're holding the same guidance 200 to 210.
Or tons mill to be about 8,180,000 tons, without any downtime for commissioning or these other liner changeovers, things like that. We should be able to do that. That'll be the highest rate we put through the mill there in history. We'll be mining 3 different phases in main vein So 4, 5, and 7. So 4 and 7 are pretty much fresh and oxide ores, while phase 5 is fresh ore, and then, Montana Pit's been mentioned a number of times now that it's oxide transitional or no pressure next year.
So we'll have 28,000,000 tons of waste in a fair strip ratio next year. It's a bit of an increase because we are, stripping the Montana pit. 6,000,000 tons of ore, including 2,000,000 tons of oxide. Capital expenditures are similar to what we experienced this year, land acquisition, capitalized rebuilds of the mining fleet. We have 2 big rebuilds for the work silo generators.
I believe they're, rebuilt at 96000 hours. Once again, Montana production is in Q1 of 2020. Per report concludes, I think I mentioned earlier, clearing and grubbing and grade controlled drilling right now. Blue Courts is the next pit we'll mine after Montana. So we want to commission that one in 2021.
So somewhere around year end, we plan to do the early works on that. That concludes my presentation. Thank you, everyone.
Thanks, Dan. Are there any questions for either Chris or Dan or any of the other executives, Bill, of course Clive and, and Dale Craig is, the most recent manager of, the Masbate mine in terms the executive. It's a Lawson Winder from Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Dan, maybe just for you, since you just presented, that was, great. Just a few things on the mine plan for 2020 and then life of mine. So just on 2020, The, I I assume the, the tons that aren't going to be mined and put through the mill will be made up from the stockpile. Can you give us any guidance on how large the current stockpile is and what the average grade is. And then that strip ratio is fairly, fairly large.
Do you, what's your current life of mine plan strip ratio for, Mazadi? Thanks.
Good questions. Current stockpiles, I think on, speaking off the top of my head, I should reference something, but around 32,000,000 tons at an average grade of roughly 0.6 grams per ton. And I can get back with you. I can confirm those numbers in more exactness. Stripping ratio, I think, next year is, 4.7 or so.
And, this year, it's about a 2.4, so it's roughly double. So it's, the Montana pit, if you go back away as we were, planning to mine it this year. So we're just, we're just postpone stripping, so the stripping is higher. Life of mine, I don't have that number off the top of my head, but it would be somewhere well below 4.7, but I bit in excess of the 2.4. This year was a bit, you know, a bit low just because of the fact we weren't stripping any new pits.
So, life of mine is probably 3.X somewhere, but I can confirm that and get back to you.
And then just maybe on the distribution of that side or do you expect that all later in the year or it would be fairly evenly spread throughout the year?
But you believe it's relatively evenly spread. I'll have to take a look at it.
Are there any further questions for the Masbate team? Okay. With that, on the schedule, We're, and for those of you on the webcast, we're going to take about a 20 minute break. So that'll bring us back right around 3:30. So, please, enjoy yourself for those refreshments in the back.
And for those of you in the webcast, we'll be back, broadcasting at about 3:30. Thank you. So, so, thanks so far, for everybody. Great questions. Great presentations from everyone around.
And and all the countries so far. Now we'll bring up, our team from Namibia, the Ojikoto team And that consists of, Mark Daugh, Country Manager, Eric Bernard, who is the, my manager and Andy Brown to make a reappearance, as head of exploration in Africa.
Hi. Good afternoon, everybody. Alright. Just talking about Namibia. I've spoken many years about it.
Most most of you have been there before, so I'm not gonna spend too much time in the country itself, but, I think it's defined by stability. It's, certainly one of the most stable countries in Africa. We call it Africa light or Africa facilities in the common lingo. We have a very strong private sector advocacy, which, which means that the private sector, the chambers of minds, chambers of Commerce And Industry, various other organizations really have some say of a government policy. And and where there is policy that is promulgated that is not very sensible, often sometimes, they they have the they consult a little too late There's always an opportunity to turn it around as we've done recently through the chamber of mines, been very successful at that.
Namibia has excellent infrastructure, good logistics, efficient port. In fact, our NAND port authorities claim that they are the most efficient Port in Africa, recently been expanded with a new container terminal, new oil terminal, and, I think that a lot of traffic had to go via South Africa is now going to the Office Bay as a hub. We've got a very well developed mining sector excuse me, being very close to South Africa. As you know, South Africa is a very strong mining country. A lot of our original equipment that we're using as manufactured there or we source it from South Africa.
That's very useful. And what's very important in our country especially in that jurisdiction is in completely independent judiciary, superior to the government. You might have heard recently that we've actually had a couple of ministers put in jail the the government loses court cases all the time, which is quite unusual in in our part of the world. So from that point of view, Africa is, Namibia in Africa is a great place to live, great place to operate, and I think that, B2 said a fantastic experience of investment in Namibia. We started gold production at the end of 2014, ahead of schedule below budget, And then, almost concurrently, we expanded the plant to 3,100,000 tonnes per annum that was completed in 2015.
We've had, as a as a metallurgical engineer, we've had absolutely amazing gold recovery since the beginning close to 99% consistently 98.5. It's it's virtually unheard of certainly in my mining career, and we continue with that The, productivity production and, financial results, the profitability have exceeded expectations every year since inception 2015 to 2019. So for 5 years that we've been operating now, we've exceeded our expectations. And the great exciting thing, as was mentioned this morning, is that we have a lot of, potential for an underground extension to our to our deposit, which is being finalized right now. As was mentioned by Christopher earlier, We have, the 2nd lowest population density in the world.
We're actually Christopher Sikreti. We're on 2.9, the 2.9 people per square kilometer. How you get a point line of a person, but, but it's the 2nd lowest after Mongolia and third comes Australia. I think Canada's about 5th The Namibian dollar is pegged to the South African rand, which could be a good thing. It can be a bad thing too, obviously, you know, exporting environment, we're quite happy with the weak South African run because we we've earned US dollars.
But the sunken round is is quite a volatile currency as you, as you're aware. Not so sure that, picking it to the sunken round is a good thing for the future. One of the great things, especially one of the interests that I have is environmental protection. I'm working for a wonderful company that is absolutely dedicated to that as well as, community upliftment. Maybe it was the 1st country in the world to have protection of the environment as part of the constitution.
And, they uphold that to this day. Really is quite remarkable. We have a very well defined and developed the Cholesterol, geological Cholesterol was, initially set up by the European Union under the Sisman funding system, and and that forms the basis for a lot of the exploration before, the work on the ground gets done. Everybody goes off to the coloristral and has the geophysical information that's, that's on that. Mining is very important in Namibia.
14% of the GDP. We just got the figures out recently through our consultations of the government, and 63% of foreign exchange earnings. So it's clearly important by far the largest sector of the economy, and that includes zinc refining and diamond cutting and polishing. You might find different statistics in the in the press or the web about that, but if you include the mining products as well as, so it's the refined product as well as direct mining contribution, it it gets up to 14% 63% of exports. As you heard from Neil a little earlier, we have a newly elected government last week, literally, very peaceful demonstrations, prison Clangop is back in.
And he's very much a friend of mining, very in favor of beta gold. We we certainly are the darlings in Namibia. It always says that I could stand up here and talk about our CSI. We call it corporate search investment as opposed to responsibility. Initiatives, I could talk forever and was one of those difficult things was to choose, 4 projects that I could, talk very briefly about.
Excuse me, flooding my throat. The corporate social investment activities in Namibia in fact throughout the operations of BTGold are not optional. It's it's something we're absolutely expected to do. And giving back is so much fun because, honestly it makes you feel great when you look at yourself in the morning and you you think of what our company has done in our country, we have, by far, the largest corporate social investment activities in the country, including the other mining houses, including a large corporates, and B2Gold really stands out as is exceptional. So as I said, to to choose 4 projects is is virtually impossible.
And let's talk very briefly about the one on the left. This is, a project called the Development Workshop. Which is tackling the informal squad account developments that are literally taking over the the cities. We only have 2 cities in the country, but, the, the massive influx urbanization of people from the rural areas has become a real problem. There's a lot of let's say lack of structure, lack of latrines, and, problems with diseases.
And so we took it upon ourselves to sponsor an organization called D. W. The Burton Workshop. It was initially in Angola and had a fantastic a bit of fantastic job. They're a good experience there of, semi formalizing the, the urbanization and the squad accounts that are developed in in Angola.
We set them up through the moving chamber of environment, which itself, next project long, which was the right, is a beta gold initiative. We we set up a moving chamber environment, And now we have a social, social pillar of, the Libyan Chamber Environment, and this is the key, project of that social pillar. We're providing, affordable properties, not houses, affordable properties that are semi serviced with, sewage, electricity, partial electricity roads and that sort of thing in the urban areas. So that's one of our flagship projects. Maybe in chamber of environment, perhaps the flagship project is Big Old Namibia.
It's not only about the environment in Namibia because we have such a low population density, as I mentioned a little earlier, people live off the environment. And if you support the environment, you're supporting livelihoods. And what we've done is we've formalized and organized the entire sector by creating an umbrella body, which has brought all the environmental conservation engineers under 1 umbrella, managed to find the perfect guy, Doctor. Chris Brown, to head it up as the CEO. We run it at arm's length for muscles.
We We funded a 100% in terms of the, institutional funding so that all the project funding can go directly to the sharp point of the projects. And most of the projects are supporting communities that support the environment. So that's been very successful. One of the projects that I'm very much in favor of, the next one along say the same. We have the last remaining SAN, which, in other words, bushmen communities that live as hunter gatherers, in an area of Eastern Libya called Bushland.
And, there's a conservancy in that area that the government is allocated to the people that they can continue with their traditional lifestyles. They're the oldest people. We all have sand, blood in us, sand genes, And what what has been happening because they're so marginalized as they've actually begun to lose their culture. They've turned to the usual sort of things that marginalized communities do, alcohol, and and they've lost their identity. And so there's an organization that we're supporting that is looking at, providing the same with opportunities for schooling within the areas where they live as hunters, hunter gatherers, So the children learn from their parents.
They learn about their culture, the beautiful, knowledge that they've that have been passed on for literally 1000 years. Without losing it completely, but also having the opportunity of becoming Westernized and going to going to schools and eventually to universities or getting technical qualifications, they have the option of of doing both without losing their their beautiful culture. Last up is, a fantastic initiative. We're calling it the Rhino Gold Bar project, as I mentioned, you know, helping communities, helping the country, the planet is, is not optional in BC Gold. And when I presented this, this project about a year ago to the executives.
The idea was that some of our gold could go towards the production of a of coins at that stage, which eventually became bars because of the legal tender status requiring quite a lot of time to, to get approved through the, mystery finance the Bank of Namibia, and eventually the cabinet of Namibia. And so eventually, we, we discussed the production of the gold bar that would go towards conservation 100% of the donation. And when I asked about this, to the executives, because of the critical criticality of the Rhino Purchasing problem. Clive Sydney, so how much money do you want? And, I said, well, how about a 1000 ounces of gold?
And, all execs is not at their head. Sounds good. So we've literally donated a 1000 ounces of gold, the project starts in January next year. It'll go towards a 100% of it, including the conservation premium of and above the price of the spot price of gold, will go towards the communities support the rhinos. I've been northwest Namibia.
It's the last free roaming population of rhinos in the world. As you're all aware and Ryaners are being devastated by coaching. We say that there are 10 years left if you follow the trajectory of the the graph of of, reduction in rain and population 10 years left of wild rainers on earth. And, this project is, as I say, kicking off. It'll be at the Endava in February next year, and, the initial launch will be in, at the end of January, in Namibia.
We'll also be launching here. In Vancouver. So with that, I'm gonna hand over to to Eric who's running the mine. Thank you.
Thanks, Mark. I guess I don't have much to say. He's still my thunder. So, Eric,
Thanks, Ian. Good afternoon. Just put it back on our join B2Gold in 2014 at Otjikatze during the construction of the plant. And on the note with regards to the timeline, B2Gold acquired the deposit in 2011, only 90% of the deposit with the other 10% to your local, empowerment group, EV. In 2012, the feasibility was completed for the 2 for the 2,500,000 tonne per annum plant with the construction then commencing and being completed in November when commissioning commenced.
In 2015, we, went over to commercial production And shortly after that, the expansion of the plant commenced to 3,100,000 tonne per annum plant. The production of the plant consistently exceeded the design of 3.1. And since then, we've been operating between 3,300,000 and 3,400,000 tonnes per annum On the mining side, the production rates were increased from 16,000,000 tonnes per annum to 43,000,000 tonnes. It was a gradual ramp up over 2 years. And we've also got an excellent infrastructure with the depot support nearby, highway trends the right path to mine, as well as an HFO solar plant hybrid.
Oh, too
early to hear. The production overview as of the end of the third quarter, we were 4% up on our gold production, 13% below our cash operating costs and 12% below all in sustaining. Sitting at $10501 on the cash operating costs and $8.95 on the all in sustaining. The 2019 production, mined tons, we aiming to get about 8,600,000 tons for the year to grade of 1 gram a ton. Totalton waste tons mined, 34,000,000 tons, and total tons mined just below 43,000,000.
On the million side, we're aiming for 3,400,000 for the closure of, 2019. At an average grade of between 1.61.7 grams a tonne at a recovery of just over 98.5 grams of 98.5%. Now guidance, we will still meet between 165.75 ounces kilo ounces of gold. We have been consistently producing between 30,000 and 55,000 ounces per quarter since the startup in 2015 going into commercial production, And as mentioned several times before, we are consistently exceeding 98% on the gold recovery. We expect it to meet our guidance for 165 to 175, and also probably be better on the cash operating cost guidance of 52,560 ounces.
The Underground project, which is Adam mentioned several times, we're busy with this study and hoping to get board approval, during the fourth quarter now. Something that's worth to mention that's not on this slide. We've also just recently achieved 5,000,000 hours or the LTI free hours on the safety. Looking into 2020, the processing plant will still mill 3,400,000 tonnes at a recovery of 98% on the gold recovery. Mining rates will be in line with we do now in 2019 at 43,000,000 tonnes.
And then with the Wolfshag Underground, if advance is expected to start producing high grade or concurrently with the open pit mining. Other than that, there's no significant changes to the site operations. As mentioned before, the annual production for 2020, We're looking at 160 to 170 kilo ounces, mill 3,400,000 at 98% gold recovery, On the mining side, our oil production will be primarily from Ochicata phase 2 and Wilshag phase 2 with waste stripping, been focused on Otjikoto Phases 3, 4, and we'll share it phase 3. On the tailing side, we'll continue raising the dam by means of cyclone deposition. And we are also doing quarterly engineer of record inspections, which is a bit we it's it's It's an improved situation over the current of the requirements of an annual inspection by the engineer of record.
Capital expenditure will be focused on stripping campaigns at Wolfshag. And if we go ahead with the underground project, Wolfshag Underground. Just on the Wolfshag Underground project, it's the ore coming out from Wolfshag will supplement the low grade stockpiles, to feed the moles, to feed the moles, not moles. The if the project continues, the, development of 15,000 meters will be done by the contract by a contractor, whether the mining will be done by us or the contractor is still to be decided upon. Production rate, we're looking at about 1100 tonnes of ore per day and the total ounces of between 225,270,000 ounces.
And there's approximately 4 year producing life of the underground. This is a proposed timeline for the project. As you can see, we've already commenced the study, which was commenced in the 3rd quarter, running through to the 4th quarter. Concurrently with the study, we've already started with the environmental compliance certificate, getting all the environmental approvals done. The tendering process, we are aiming we are hoping to commence during the first quarter of next year with the underground development then commencing in the third quarter and going into production in 2022.
Thank you, Andy.
Thanks, Eric. You've met Andy before it'll run you through our exploration activities at Ojikoto and Namibia.
This will be a relatively quick overview. Just a couple of slides here. Recap of the 2019 budget, $4,800,000 looking ahead to 2020, you can see that we're proposing a similar amount for next year. As with this year, the focus is going to be very much on near mine exploration. This year, about 12,000 meters of drilling completed in and around Ojikoto, much within the mine license itself, but also some on the regional target looking for, near surface, targets in the region.
Some of the highlights from this year's drilling is we have had explorations asset Wolfshug this year going deep, going deep on the structure. And, we have stepped out on on some what I would call historic results, with some success, that we'll be looking to follow-up on next year. What we're looking at here, obviously, is the footprint of the combined Wolf Shog and Otjikoto pits. Overlaying on some magnetic imagery. The colored traces and the pinkish color are the projected, trends and mineralization.
Looking looking specifically at some of the the near mine exploration we've done this year. 1st and foremost, we we looking at the the the team in in Namibia has made a very good geological model of the Wilshug deposit and the structural controls. The hole we've indicated OT19 508w1 is a wedge off a hole that we took a six hundred meter step out on the known mineralization based on the strength of the the structural controls in this model and a bid to hit it deep down plunge, excuse me, and show that the Wolfshog system existed at depth. Now we realize that we're well beyond the economic the underground at this point. This is purely exploration, but seeing that we've got greater than the 6 gram material at the core of this intercept, we believe that there's the possibility for some deep underground or to come here.
This is going to be the subject of further exploration in the new year. Subsequent to the the wedge off 508, we stepped out an additional hundred meters to the south down plunge. The initial hole hits on an order of a hundred meters of very favorable alteration before getting into our target horizon. No assays on that yet. We similar to the previous hole we elected to complete a wedge off that hole to come up into the full structure and see if we can get Wolfug type mineralization in the full hinge at this depth.
Results are pending, as I said. One of the additional, bits of success we had this year, is what we're calling the OTG shoot named after a historic drill hole drilled in, something like 2010, you'll see OTG 23, which is just to the east side of the proposed underground development for the Wolfshug underground development. Looking at the core, there definitely is readily observable full structures in there mineralized We inferred a plunge or a shoot like geometry to this, step down plunge, up plunge, excuse me, up plunge you can see the projected up plunge extent of this OTG shoot is referring to it would put it within a hundred meters proposed underground development if we're successful in tracing it back up plunge. We only got a few holes into it this year. Ultimately it may be something that's best drilled off underground development.
But in the new year, we'll certainly change it chase it back up plunge near surface to see if we can continue on these on these grades, at better than 5 grams per ton, better than 4 grams per ton. This certainly puts it above the 3 and a half gram cutoff that is potentially being used as the cutoff for the underground material. As I said, 2020 budgets are proposed, on the order of, let's recap there, $4,200,000, which will give us similar amount of money as we had to spend this year and we'll be very much focused on near mine exploration.
Thanks, Andy. Are there any questions for the Ojikoto Namibia team. Okay. With that, we'll move on to to something that's really important it's all really important, but something that we we we really take pride in is responsible mining. And and all that entails.
So I'd like to invite the responsible mining group up. That includes Darren Leanne Kelly and Ken Jones.
And we'll be
starting with Ken Jones.
Thank you Ian. My name's Ken Jones. I am the environmental manager for B2Gold. I've been with the company now for 7 years, 7 plus years, and it's been incredible to see the growth of the company and and, their environmental and health and safety. Programs as well.
So I wanna talk to you a little bit about our environmental management and our performance, and I'm actually not gonna talk to you today about some our more flashy programs. Maybe not talk about our coral reef programs already already been mentioned, the solar plants, that we keep producing, and and developing. I'm gonna talk a little bit more about our strategic objectives moving forward. And one of the reasons that I'm able to do this is that we do have environmental management systems functioning and in place at every single one of our operations audited by independent, external auditors based on international best practice. So we focus our environmental management systems on ISO, 14,001, certifications.
Our our Masbody mine is also certified to this, standard. And then we manage a critical risk at our operations, for water management, tailings management, cyanide, air quality, etcetera based on other international standards, be it, tailings and banquet safety based on Canadian or Australian standards. The cyanide code for for cyanide management or other international accepted standards. And then to date in 2019, we can report, a trend or a 0 trend, really, No significant environmental incidents at any of our operations, this year to date, following the same in 2018. And the same in 2017.
So we have dedicated, professional environmental teams at all of our sites, that work to support the operating team and operate environmental at a very, very high level. So one thing that that you may be very interested in then is what are we doing internally and and and strategically moving forward. And of course, a big focus, an industry, has been tailings management. I've been a lot of scrutiny, from investors, like yourselves, from regulatory, from the social side of things, due to some of the catastrophic failures over the last 5 years around the world, from tailings and bankements. And so what have we been doing at B2Gold, in this area?
In 2019, we've updated all of our internal regulations and practices standards, to match what has happened around the world, with changes in international best practices. A key component there has been, updating and finding our requirements for our annual inspections, standardizing that across the the company. And also for our 3rd party reviews, a new requirement that's come come do in international best practice. And we will actually be performing our 1st third party reviews with independent auditors at both of our Masbody and Otjikoto mines in the first quarter of next year. Another key focus has been not just, having these practices and standards in place and and and functioning at our sites, but also access to that information if something were to ever happen access at the corporate level.
So we've created a database, that we do maintain now at the corporate level. So in the case of of a serious situation, we are able to respond to investors, to governments, with up to date information in a very rapid manner. And then, of course, we will this is a continuing evolving situation, just 2 weeks ago. A global tailings review issued, their draft global tailings standard. We're currently looking at that for any potential change is the best practice that we may need to incorporate into, our practices, and we'll continuously monitor, the situation to maintain high standard at all of our tailings and basements and our tailings management across the company.
And then another thing that we've done this year is we've we've produced and generated, an internal strategic plan. Environment. We we're operating at high level. So where do we want our operations to go in the next couple of years? And you'll see there's 6 key components to this, strategic plan that we have for the company, focus on what those key risks are, for the company.
And 2 of them, I'd like to just touch on briefly, water and energy and climate change. So water, of course, is is key. We work mines require high quantities of water. We work in a range of water environments from the deserts in Africa subtropical, excessive water environments in the Philippines and potentially in Colombia. And so we will be updating all of our water scarcity and water risk assessments, in 2020.
We're completing updated water accounting, at all of our operations that ties in with international ICMM and and Australian, guidelines for for wire accounting. And all of this will lead to in 2021, we plan to issue, an external water report. That will allow us to to gather all this, additional monitoring and then metrics that we're creating now and relay that better, extra only to investors, to regulators, and others. And ultimately, this will lead hopefully to, water use reduction targets of how can we minimize our impact in the areas that we that we operate. And similarly with energy and climate, a topic that's that's ever developing we have a continued plan, as well with energy and climate.
We, of
course, are building our second, solar plant at Fekola right now. I believe it'll be the the largest hybrid, solar plant in the world when it's completed. We're also working this year. We will complete our emissions inventory estimates for all of our operations. And then next year, further integration of climate change risk into our policy and into enterprise risk assessments and site risk assessments to ensure that we are positioned to be able to manage any, risks to the company, from climate change in the future.
Similarly to water, we will then put this into, an external energy and climate change report in 2021 and ultimately lead to emissions reductions targets for the company, in the future. And then lastly, we do plan to launch in 2020, a bit of an ESG transparency hub, if you will, a portion of our website, that is a consolidated portal for external stakeholders, for investors, 4 communities in which we can put forward all this information in a transparent manner, make all of our standards reports, accessible, to the public, is our commitment to the environment to keep ourselves accountable to our stakeholders. And with that, I'll turn it over to Darren to talk about health and safety.
Thanks, Kim. Which one do I
have to
put the agreed. Yeah. Yeah.
Thanks, Ken. Good afternoon. My name is Darren Perry. I'm the, manager of health and safety for B2Gold. So B2Gold is set, an objective of sending workers home injury free each and every shift.
So in 2019, I'm pleased to say that we've exceeded our targets for ensuring injury, reduction and safety on-site. This will be our 4th consecutive year of injury reduction with the realization that 2019 will be the safest on record. These results will place us in the top 5% within industry for safe operations. Our achievements are due in part to our leadership our leadership team's commitment to safety. The technical expertise of our on ground OHS teams and a best practice approach to safety systems, processes, and procedures.
We also take a proactive approach to behavior based safety, that drives individual and collective ownership for making safe decisions. And lastly, we focus on prevention. So these slides, I'm just gonna do a quick overview here. Our safety system elements, we have 18 standards. We have 20 operational standards, an audit protocol risk management approach, crisis management plans and OHS incident tracking and reporting that are consistent throughout our operations.
Those are in alignment with ISO standards, core TSM, and ICMM. Our system is also independently audited, by by independent experts for safety. We use lead and lag indicators to track performance monthly, quarterly, and annually. And once again, our OHS activities are focused on prevention. The results of that, as I said, this is a 4 year Over 4 years, we've reduced lost time incidences, by 94%.
We've had a reduction from the previous year of 78% and a 25% reduction in restricted work injuries over a 3 year period. We saw an increase in restricted work injuries in 2018, but if you actually look at the number of days, 6 days, totaling, sorry, 6 injuries totaling 129 days for this year, as opposed to, sorry, 6 day, 6 injuries for 129 days, verse 6 for, 79. So that's a 40% reduction from the previous year. Next slide shows us, looking at our internal benchmarks and externally compared to ICMM Companies. Of which there are 30 members and the mind, mind safety roundtable in North America, of which there are 17 companies.
So looking at the previous year, as I mentioned, we had a 78% reduction in lost time injury. We've had 87% reduction in total reportables. That's lost time in medical aid. And if we take a comparison between ICMM Group, and the mining safety roundtable, were 87% lower than their average. We've had a 97% reduction in our severity rate from 2018.
So far, we've only had 15 days total lost time for 3 injuries total compared to 201 days the previous year. So we're enduring people at a less severe rate and they're taking less time off as a result of those injuries. The last one, just to highlight some of our, individual accomplishments at site Um's Body was just, awarded the National Award for, Safety System Excellence by the Philippine Department of labor. They were the silver award finalist, so 2nd place in the whole country. Masbate has also gone 1 year 370 days without a lost time incident.
Previously, they had a run of about 3 a half years, 17000000 hours. Ochacoto is approaching almost 2 years, last time incident free, 637 days. They'll hit that target in March of 2020. Otrakoto is also being recognized by the Chamber of Mines for Excellence and Occupation of Hall safety systems training and competency and are being asked to develop some best practices around mine rescue. Fekola, unfortunately, has had 3 incidents this year, mainly related to upgrades and maintenance.
They previously have gone two and a half years without a lost time incident. So all good stories, around health and safety proactive and looking forward. I think that's it. I'll turn it over anyway.
I'd like to introduce Leanne Kelly. She's responsible for, our Responsible Mining Report which has been an initiative, that began 3 years ago and a very successful one, and she's gonna talk to you a bit about that.
So, hopefully many of you have read our Responsible Mind Report we've been producing or generating a report for the last 3 years. And that's our vehicle, our prime vehicle, for being able to communicate about our performance related to environmental, social, and governance, issues. For us, the process of actually generating the report is quite valuable because it allows us to go really deeply into all these areas and to understand where there's gaps. And where we have really good approaches and solutions in one area and how we're able to bring that to another region. But when we think about this audience, our responsible mining report demonstrates to you, how we manage risk risk related to environmental, social, and governance factors.
So it's our main vehicle right now for being able to communicate our performance, with respect to ESG issues. There's also external firms out there, ESG rating firms that also analyze our performance related ESG, and they rate us every year. Over the last 3 years, our score where our rating has improved dramatically. However, we're not chasing a score. What we are doing is we're working very closely communicating very closely with these particular two groups, sustainability and ISS.
With the objective of making sure that the information that they have about us is accurate and complete. And so what we really want is that when you receive our ESG reports on b 2 gold's performance, we wanna make sure that that accurately reflects what we're doing. You been listening all day to a number of different factors about how we perform, how we plan, and how we operate. And there's financial and legal and technical production numbers, but a lot of, our success is also related to how we manage environmental, social, and governance issues. So the next few slides come from our 2018 responsible mine report.
And right now, we're already starting to collect data and information for our 2019 report as we come to the end of the year. Our environmental performance as you're aware in 2018 was very strong, and it's reflected in the numbers that you see here in the report. And that you continue to see in 2019. In 2018, we also established a local procurement baseline And the reason why we do that is because we want to be able to demonstrate how all this economic value that we generate also gets distributed, through local procurement and local employment opportunities. And the the importance of that is because governments and community stakeholders, that's one of their number one priorities and expectations when we come to propose a project to work in those countries.
So being able to communicate what we're doing in terms of local procurement and local employment is critical to being able to meet those promises that we make to those government stakeholders and community stakeholders. Our supply chain as well, we manage risk in our supply chain. We've been implementing performance expectations with our major suppliers and then rolling that out with our other suppliers and our supply chain. Ken Jones has already spoken about our comprehensive environmental management system. And the other different solutions and investments that we make in order to mitigate and manage environmental aspects of our operations.
The approach that we've been taking, you know, in 2018, we piloted a couple of schemes. We've used Old Jacobo as an example, as our pilot mine, so we piloted a water accounting framework at Otjikoto in 2018. We piloted greenhouse gas emissions, inventory reporting there. And as you've heard from Ken, in 2019, we've been rolling out those, those reporting frameworks to other sites, and we'll continue to do that going forward. We talk a lot about how we've grown very quickly.
You've seen timelines, timelines about B2 goals, growth, and timelines in each of these regions. That growth also means a growth in a lot of people that choose to work for us. And with all that comes quite a diverse mix of languages, people, cultures, customs, We chose to a couple years ago to focus specifically in that diversity to focus on gender diversity. So you'll read in the report how we're we why we made that commitment. The analysis we did to try to understand if there are barriers within the sector, and how we can actually, address those barriers.
And then in 2019 report, that journey continues. And you'll read about the strategic, plan that we've created that we're going to be applying going forward to be able to moved the bar on gender diversity within our company. Darren presented our strong positive trajectory in our health safety performance. Those numbers, if you look at the report, what's behind those numbers, you'll be able to see a 5 year rolling average of all of the the data that, Darren referred to. And you can benchmark that against other organizations when you look at their sustainability reports against our reports.
But even with that strong trajectory, we continue to invest in safety solution in 2018, Again, Otjikoto, we implemented a fatigue monitoring solution there, and that was immediately successful. And we're going to be rolling that out going forward to other sites. Communities, As many of you are aware, in order to permit and operate a mine, you need social acceptance. And fundamental to that is how you engage with stakeholders. So we start engaging very early stage exploration throughout the life of a mind.
And then we have very specific ways of engaging with stakeholders when we start contemplating, you know, future closure plans. And how that's gonna impact stakeholders. We take one of the ways that B2Gold has been successful in working in this very geopolitical regions that that you've seen us working in is we have an open door approach to stakeholder engagement. We have literally hosted thousands of stakeholders through mind tours in all four of our regions where we've been operating. And those are stakeholder government stakeholders, regional, local stakeholders, teachers, you, all kinds of stakeholders, we have an open door approach where we're able to demonstrate how we mine, how we manage environmental rehabilitation of lands, how we manage water, how we invest in communities.
We've also taken a proactive approach to human rights. In all four of our regions, we have conducted human rights risk assessments in order to understand where potential risk exists related to human rights issues, which also include security. And those risk assessments have translated into action plans and now we're monitoring those action plans to make sure that they're actually been put in place and that our human rights due diligence is embedded throughout our whole organization. We wanna make sure those those human rights reports aren't just sitting there as a report on a shelf. And lastly, a number of the speakers have talked about and referred to the different community investment projects that we do in every region.
Here, we're simply demonstrating that level of investment in terms of dollars. But we also, monitor for our significant community investment projects. We monitor the impact an outcome of those projects. And as you've heard many of us say, we wanna understand how that's changing people's lives. So one example in Maui, we a couple of years ago, we started a market garden activity or project, that in 2018, there were 20 women involved in that.
It was providing an alternative livelihood to those women, an alternative to artisanal mining. And in 2017, that collection of of women, their annual income was about $35100. In 2018, 1 year later, their collective income was over $21,000, which was about a 500% increase But more importantly, is those 18 women that rise in income allowed those 18 women to rise above the poverty line of value. So those are the type of impacts and outcomes that we're really passionate about and that you've probably heard the different country managers and Clive and the executive talk about. So We're right now putting together our information for a 2019 report, and we really encourage you to read the report directly so that you see how we are managing environmental, social and government issues, and how we're mining responsibly.
Thank you, Leanne, and, thank you, Leanne. Thank you, everybody, on the responsible mining panel. Very, very impressive. Are there any questions for the group? Lawson from, Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Sure.
I think all of us, will be involved in Nicaragua as needed. I think we, we still are in a bit of a I don't know, consulting supporting role is my understanding. And and, of course, professionally personally just available, to our colleagues there. And as far as the Graham Lotte, I know that, you know, we're all all the a lot of the corporate teams already, looking at the the PEA and the feasibility study, etcetera.
Yeah. In terms of the Caliber would want it to have, our involvement on an advisory board and the representative on their board of directors as well. So big, Dale Craig's playing a role there, which gives them some continuity gives them the history because Dale was involved for 12 years with Nicaragua, directly and then overseeing it from an executive point of view. Now as you've heard, he's taking on a exciting new challenge in Columbia, but he'll he'll be there for continuity to help the caliber out with whatever they need. That was at their at their request.
Any other questions, general questions or place?
No. Just, Mark stated a great job in the ESG presentation and, I really appreciate you getting the approach in terms of EST as well. But in terms of, swansea, you know, how much engagement do you have with investors that are into ESG. But are you in direct contact with them, or is it just with the 2 farms that are looking at ESG and and talk to you about this.
This is Bob.
I I would It's not just the 2 firms that that we we deal with on a sort of day to day basis. There's a number of other, ESG focus institutions that we currently have our finger on the pulse of. So it's a it's a much broader, scope in terms of our engagement.
But it's a great question because it's becoming so much more important in the world because you can see we're positioned very well, in that what we need to communicate that continually all the time. Anything else to add to that?
Yeah. I guess, you know, I I was highlighting those 2 to firms because they're the ones that, a lot of our investors are saying that they're receiving their reports. But there's actually quite a number of them that are popping up. Some of them are just like niche firms that just focusing on human rights. And then they they evaluate our performance with respect to that and we get rated or scored in that.
So there's quite a number of them that we're that we're responding to, but I guess the question could be turned to you is, you know, is there, are there firms that are, evaluating the company's performance that you think that we should be working with?
That's nice. Any other questions on any topic we've covered or haven't covered? Okay. Well, maybe I'll we're ahead of time, so I get to Natalie for a while longer. Sorry.
No, it won't be very long. But I just want to summarize a little bit what we, kind of what we've tried to put forward today and it's from my perspective, be one of the founders of this company and, I think it's just really is the tremendous to see the always amazes me and I'm pretty close to it, but the experience level on the professionals of this group, it's real honored to to work with all of you. And, it's great to be able to get everyone together and and and share this, what we hear internally sometimes and what our board hears. Be able to share that with, investors in a in a in a format like this. But, you know, I think the key takeaways from my perspective from this should be a highly, obviously, a highly professional responsible gold mining company that is, as well as very profitable.
And the company that has shown the ability over the years to to manage risk as we've talked about in all sorts of different challenges. It's all about accountability. You've heard a lot about that today, but it's about really one of the most important things. That's why we do so much of what we do ourselves internally. We don't use it off a lot of contractors or consultants.
There's some good ones out there. Ultimate accountability is doing it yourselves. And that's where I think this extraordinary group of people coming together in every avenue of our industry. Working so well and working as a as a unit. You know, I talk a little bit about silos in the industry, our industry, I guess others as well.
You have silos with people in the different silos and they're comfortable there and it's one of the geology exploration, engineering development, and construction, you've got corporate finance. Etcetera, this mining industry in my mind has struggled for decades with with with not being able to break down those silos. So just what that means is for example, on an exploration success, for the expedition is, are successful and we've had great success with Tom's tremendous team. But if they're successful, they're often are in, they're, they kind of keep it to themselves for quite a long time. And then you have to sort of rip it out of their hands and give it to the engineers.
And then the engineers don't tend to often consult back to the geologists and say, gee, are we building the right size mill if you have expiration success. It's those things that I thought were real challenging, and I started on this back in the bema days. Why can't we be why can't we have it all? Why can't we be, a great explorer who finds a lot of gold, but a great builder of mine, so responsible minor And ultimately a company that is very profitable and ultimately continues to grow and pay and pay a dividend. What makes us hybrid, because we are all those things It's really uncommon, partly because of the silos.
So we try to get and over the years it's been an interesting challenge and it's been very successful It took some time to get the job as an engineers to break down the barriers between the silos, to sit around together and communicate. I've always really tried to push this because the more that the finance people understand what the engineers are doing the more they respect them and vice versa, etcetera. So I wish that why can't we transform BEMA from successful, highly successful gold exploration company to a builder of mines and a responsible senior gold producer. And doing that, keep the entrepreneurial flare on the expiration side of things. So that, that sounds really straightforward.
It sounds really, hopefully kind of smart. But it's really uncommon. It's very, very uncommon. The rare expedition company that's successful, not because they're not good at it, because it's so hard. They shouldn't try and build mines, frankly.
They should get bought out by someone or take some of shares as we've done and then take their project forward. But there's a problem in the production side as far as I'm concerned because A lot of times, the big gold mining companies aren't very good at expiration because the mindset changes when you produce and you tend to get, you know, you have to have very disciplined engineers to pull all this off. You gotta have round peg round hole guys and women. That that's their job because you can't get it wrong when you're gonna pull Verizon Mountain of Rock. And get gold out of the profit.
So the discipline can take over sometimes and it's a good thing it's required, but you still have to try. I wanted to see if we could have a company, we wanted to see where we could do all of that and do it extremely well as you've seen, but still be laying on our feet, still be entrepreneurial, still go or other spirit of trend chasing the best deposits with what we think are the best deposits in the world and doing it with this great exploration team as well. And I think that one of the key takeaways when I look at where we are today and where do we go in the future. So we are that hybrid company that's proven that you can be aggressive without being reckless. There's a huge difference and that's why I think it's important for you to see all the things we do and how we do what we do trying to make sure that all stakeholders, are respected and all stakeholders win in the prospect of us developing our business.
If you take all this experience we've had together where we sit today and look at our future, I think it looks extraordinarily bright. Continue to do what we do day in, day out safely, responsibly, taking care of communities and the environment of all the things we do, but also the ability to to find more gold and do at the right times accretive deals, acquisitions to continue to grow the company. So in my mind that's what's fun about this and frankly that's one of the reasons that we still do this because at the end of the day, it's different. It's different and I love the fact that you combine the passion that comes with entrepreneurial spirit and the and the benefits of being entrepreneurial when you're successful and think outside the box combine that with really good and strong people at everything we do. That, in my mind, makes it unusual, maybe not unique, but definitely unusual.
So wanna thank everyone who was involved here today. I wanna thank, those of you that came out to hear the story and those of you on the webcast. And obviously, Our board directors, see Bob Crossler Chairman's here and some of the other directors you've been introduced to before. Great support from the board. A tremendous, thank you to all the presenters, but also the people behind the presenters.
It's just wonderful to get you all together and share the stories and, and, path the way forward. So thank you very much for your participation. I hope it was an interesting afternoon.