Lot of information to share with you today. And we're gonna try and keep keep it moving along and, hopefully, you'll find it interesting and, you know, formative. This is a cautionary statement. You've seen these before and, it's in your presentation if you actually care to read it. There's the second half.
So today you're going to hear from, several of our executive team and the the my our some of our mine managers and country managers. We have the whole group here together. I just want to start off a little bit with a bit of an overview, and many of you are quite familiar with B2Gold, but just by way of, introduction the summary, of course, as most of you know, Beach Gold was created by, you know, one of them, the former management. And some directors of Bemagold, which was a highly successful company that transitioned from exploration to mine construction and production very successfully in various locations in the world. Vema was victims of their own success and that Kinross offered to, exchange their shares for ours in 2007 for $3,500,000,000 Canadian.
So at the end of the day, we were not going to be entrenched management, but, so so we took that deal to our shareholders, but we got a chance to start again, called B2Gold. Just 11 years ago, we started Beach Gold and it's quite a been quite a remarkable journey. So we find ourselves obviously that tremendous experience together from BIMA to B2Gold. And I think that's one of the key driving forces in our success. We've taken that same model that we learned for me, it was over 30 years.
You know, we applied that to Beach Gold in just eleven short years. We took the company from 0 production to where close to a million ounces a year now of profitable gold production. I think most people are familiar with where we are in the various This map shows the locations of where we are in our head office in Vancouver. You're going to hear about most of these projects. One of them that I will highlight today that seems to be potentially in is a Gramalote project in Columbia.
Kelvin Duchinski, recently left Barrick to join Anglagon Kashanti as CEO. And, they've been doing some interesting work on Gramalote with some remodeling in the last last this year. And recently they got together with our technical group and presented, some new models for Gramalache that suddenly show the potential for a much more robust project than they had shown before. We always felt that the grade getting beaten up on the low side. And there seems to be some new modeling, which we're looking into, and we're running our own geologic model, as we speak, while it done by the end of the year.
But just a heads up that if the, if the new models from AGA, stand up, then we certainly may have another significant asset in Columbia with Gramalote. So we'll keep you posted on that. And, I've breakfast will come in a couple of weeks ago, so it's definitely on his radar as well. This is, some of the executives you're gonna Hey, everyone is on this page as pictures here except for Ed Bart's VP, taxation, external reporting. Ed was kind enough to go to Molly and spell off Randy Ryckard.
So, it's been running operations down there. Not really true, but at the end of the day. So just a kind of an idea of, one thing I do want to talk briefly about is political risk. It's obviously a major topic, understandably in our industry and has been for some time, maybe more so now than But this slide's kind of, I think it's very indicative of what we've been able to do between Bima and B2Gold.
So if you look at
all these Countries, Chile, United States, Russia, South Africa, Nicaragua, and Namibia, Philippines, and Mali. What they have in common is that we've succeeded in all of these countries, quite, quite remarkably. And I do think that it's very important to underline what I think is the key to successful management of political risk. And it's the first point here, which is always delivering on your promises that you make. It sounds really simple, but at
the end of the day, I
would suggest you that a lot of the political risk that's been realized in some choose in taxation and others are often because companies didn't deliver on the promises you make. If you promise the president Nicaragua or or Molly or Namibia or others as I've done, and you establish a personal relationship of mutual trust. And you promised that you're gonna build a mine and let's say, two and a half or 3 years. And you tell them they're going to get all these taxes. You're going to treat all these people.
It's going to be wonderful, and they're going to look good. As the leader of their country because they did a smart deal for the Western company. That's all great. They are not like us. When you mentioned you're going to build a mine at 2 and a half or 3 years, they think because you're a Western company, they actually believe you're going to do it.
Whereas most in this space today where one of the few exceptions, most people are very skeptical about schedules for building mines. So what happens if you don't deliver on the promises you make to these leaders? Well, it's about accountability at the end of the day. So all of a sudden, you caused a real problem for a leader of a country and this government. If you don't deliver on the promises you that the that the government promised its people.
So at the end of the day, we've seen this time and time again.
I don't know about you, but
if I was the president of a country and the he came in, promised me lots of things and didn't deliver on most of them, I would I would lose trust in them or lose respect. And I might consider actually trying to get more tax dollars out of the company that doesn't perform. So at the end of the day, the real secret of political risk is delivering your promises. We've succeeded in every one of these countries with excellent relationships with government. The main driving force is we did exactly what we said we would do time and time again.
That's the key to managing understanding political risk. It's about fairness respect transparency and ultimately accountability. And sadly, we haven't seen enough of that in the gold mining sector, as you all know, too well. This is just a reminder. You've seen this slide many times.
It's quite remarkable, really. We shouldn't forget what remarkable accomplishment this is, over just ten short years from no gold production to just under 1,000,000 ounces a year, but perhaps more importantly, profitable gold production. Success after success of making accretive acquisitions, not paying for ounces that might be there, not acquiring anything that needs a higher gold price and or expiration success to justify the purchase price. That's one of the key disciplines that we've had for years. A few other companies have had that discipline, sadly, many have not.
So at the end of the day, that one of the key drivers of this remarkable production growth, which will continue, the key drivers of the people If you look at the group that you're going to hear from today, we have a combined 250 years of experience, not just in the mining industry, but experience in working together at Bima and B2Gold. I don't think there's another team like it in the world. We also have a very strong Board of Directors that are very supportive of our, our company's initiatives. They know that we're aggressive. There's a big difference between being aggressive and reckless.
I think we've found the balance there. I'm very proud of what we've been able to do. So I'm going to pass it on in a few moments to Mike I'll talk a little bit about corporate strategy in the meantime. We're basically going to see the course. And the course is to continue to grow buy organically by developing our assets.
You're going to hear quite a bit today about Fekola. You know, we did something unusual there. We actually we're drilling the northern of why we were building the mine. That's not common in our industry. And because of that, we're in a position now by the end of the year with a much larger resource soon to be reserves.
We were be announcing in the first quarter of next year the completed expansion study that we're pretty excited about to expand Nicole, you'll hear about that. Stay the course. At the end of the day, we're still not in a particularly M and A frame of mind. And the reason for that is because we have a pipeline of great projects, but also we did have a lifting and grew the company and built mines when really very few were doing that. So at the end of the day, we find ourselves in a very strong position going forward But also, I'm quite alarmed by the lack of quality projects out there today.
Given that there's been very little exploration done in the world in the last 15 years, there's not a lot of good gold projects or today. And I think the competition is going to pick up because there's many companies other today that need to grow. That didn't grow when we were growing. So I think we're going to get into a competitive situation, especially for acquiring offices in the ground. We're not going to break our history.
We don't overpay. Not going to pay for ounces that might be there. We're not going to buy anything that meets a higher gold price to justify the purchase price. We will look we always look we might find the rare GM that fits our space. At the end of the day, if you look at our acquisition and expedition success, it speaks for itself and the best way to grow a gold producer.
We will continue with exploration on our own grassroots exploration, but also joint ventures with junior exploration companies. As a way to try and find additional ounce of gold. The cheapest ounces are always the ones you find. So with that, I'm going to pass it over to Mike Cinnamon who's gonna Talk to us about the financial state of the company. We're in great shape financially and, looking forward to 2019 continuing our great financial strength.
Well, thanks a lot Clive, and I think as Clive said, we in great financial shape. So that's this is an easy part of the presentation to do. So I thought we'd we'd just take a look at where we've come this year, up to the end of Q3, and then I'll have a few comments about how we see the year out turning for the balance to the end of the December. Firstly, just comment on production. We've had record quarterly production, 242,000 ounces for Q3, and then year to date, it's also a record 7.20 1000 ounces.
And, you know, obviously, mainly that reflects the inclusion of Fekola and they're operating at full capacity and and, in fact, beyond what we originally thought it would do, for the 9 months so far, but also very strong performances at miss Adiander with Dakota. So record production at the end of Q3, we think we're well on track to to to head the upper end of our guidance range, our annual guidance range of, 920 to 960,000 ounces. And if you look at that range, It it it has it has changed the mix of its change slightly through the year. We we uplift it for cola, by 20,000 ounces. Now now guiding between 4:24:30.
And in fact, when we get to the Focal Cola section, later, you might hear that we might even do slightly better than that. At Baddie. Also, they they Miss Baddie enjoyed all of the perfect operating conditions this year in beat grade throughput recoveries. So we we upgraded that, to between 202,110,000 ounces for the year, an uplift of 20. And then, but offsetting that, we downgraded Nicaragua.
The combination of the two mines there, we took down by 30, the guidance, and that really reflects almost entirely, the social unrest that they were experiencing in the country throughout, majority of this year and and the impact that it had certainly on something like supplies and access to to some parts of the site. But overall, we think we're doing right on track to hit the high end of this guidance range and We're currently finalizing our budgets for 2019, and we expect we'll put something out on that probably by mid January next year. So looking at the cost performance for for the quarter, cash costs, we were right on on consolidated basis, right on track, $504 an ounce. Year to date, we're we're actually ahead. We're $51 below budget for the year.
And, again, if you look at the mix there, Fekola's just had a spectacular start in this 1st 9 months of, through the year at $321 an ounce. So we think it's well on track ahead at least the low end of its guidance range of $3.40 to $5 to $3.90 for the year. In Masbate, $5.34, and that is significantly below its original range of 6.75, 720. So at the end of Q3, we reguided down to between 5.45.95 an ounce. In Otjikoto, very strong performance.
It continues to perform very well, $514 an ounce. That was offset again the Nicaragua Agwun assets, the operations there, that the the production is a little lower than we forecasted at higher costs, but overall, $486 year to date cash cost per ounce And we think for the year, we're going to come in at the low end of the guidance range of 505 to 550. Same story on the all sustaining costs, $749 per ounce for the quarter are almost exactly budget. Year to date, we're almost a $100 a of where we thought we'd be worth $7.40 an ounce. And a gain led by Fekola, 511 bucks ounce.
All in sustaining customers, batty, 717. Again, we regathered those costs down in Q3. Ojikoto is $747 an ounce. So overall, I I think we think we're gonna come in, certainly Fekola, most likely at or below the low end of our guidance range and overall consolidated basis think we're gonna come in right at the low end of our consolidated guidance range of 78830. So cost performance like that translates and production performance like that record translates into record revenues.
So for we've basically doubled our revenues from sales of gold, in in q32018 compared to the prior year quarter and year to date. You know, we're almost a $953,000,000 of revenue for the 1st 9 months. That reflects you know, significant increase in, production. Also that we we managed inventory through the year this year. We once Fekola started up, at the end of 2017, were carrying in some additional inventory ounces, but we've managed to sell those down through the course of the year.
So, as well as the excellent reducing output from the mines. We also managed inventory and so ended up with record sales year to date of 953,000,000 we saw that translator in the to excellent cash flow from operating activities as well. 143,000,000. For the quarter $377,000,000 or $0.38 a share, year to date. So if you put all those things together, what do we look like?
We've seen through Q3. Where where we see ourselves going for the year? Like I said, we think we'll come in at the upper end that consolidated production range near closer to that 960,000 ounce number. We think we'll be at the low end of both those cash costs and all in sustaining cost guidance ranges that you see there. And also on on a on a revenue and cash flow basis, revenues, we think we'll we'll be about 1 200,000,000, for the year.
And on the cash flow side, we're almost tripling the cash flow from operating activities that we saw last year, we're we're gonna jump from 155,000,000 to somewhere, likely a little bit north of, 4 50,000,000 on the operating cash flow side. Just give you a couple of comments on that as well. So we we've we've said, in our disclosures you know, if you assume this $1200, gold price for the next, just for the balance of 2018 and through, 1920, we think we're gonna average, somewhere around 400,000,000 dollars per annum for from operating cash flows over that 3 year period. But a couple of things bear in mind. This year, we're higher.
You know, like I said, we're gonna be 450,000,000 plus. When we get into 'nineteen, like you mentioned, the budgets are still being prepped, but a couple of things you should bear in mind. One is there's a there are some timing issues and things like mine sequencing and stripping, and more more significantly, I think, for 'nineteen, their differences in the timing of Fekola tax payments. Fekola on Lake, a lot of operations, when it when it they start up, they they did they didn't benefit from a lot of accelerated, tax deductions that you're basically taxable right out of the gates in Mali. So we've been we've been accruing those is and you'll see them.
If you look at the MD and A, you'll see the the accrued and and reported in the earning statement. But on a cash basis, most of those won't get paid until just after the first quarter next year, just because of the way the time moving installments works. So you're going to see for Molly, we'll pay most of this year's taxes next year. Now will impact operating cash flows. And then you'll also see next year we'll be paying installments for the full year in Molly for 2019 based on this year.
So it's almost like there's there's there's double cash tax payments in Mali for 2019. And that's a one off situation just because the mine just started up. So bear in that mind, we're likely going to be closer to the 300,000,000 mark on the on the operating cash flow side for, 2019 and then 2020. We'll we'll jump back up again so that overall will reach about $400,000,000 cash flow from operations. And final comments I'd make just just on on where we are today in terms of, financial equity and strength.
So we had at the end of Q3 with 353,000,000. But we $8,000,000 of that cash, on October 1st. And that was part of our strategy when we repaid our convertible in cash and matured October 1st. And when we built Fekola, the strategy was to build it without using equity. So it was it was built using a combination of operating cash flows from other sites, our various debt facilities including our revolving credit facility and this convertible note and also some prepaid goal sales.
So strategy was to to build it, without using equity and and using some debt. And now that Fekola is up and running in the and most of the operations run them very nicely and generating strong operating cash flow. Then we the second part strategy is now to start repaying some of the debt that we incurred. So overall, if you look at our debt position, we started 2017 with total debt, which combines convert the revolving credit facility and equipment loans and leases of approximately $700,000,000. We're forecasting will be down somewhere around, at least down to at least 500,000,000, by year end.
So we'll have repaid that 200,000,000 in the year. And that, that's us executing the second part of that strategy. As we said at the end of Q3, we've drawn $400,000,000 on the on the revolver. So we got a $100,000,000 left plus there's an additional 100,000,000 accordion facility there if if if we so wish we can go out now for that to to other parties without having go back and ask the lending banks again. And I I mentioned we we did fund Fekola with some gold prepayments.
They originally were 120,000,000. We got 45,000,000 of those Q3. It will be 30,000,000 left by year end, and we'll deliver the into the final ounces in that, by the mid middle of 2019. So we'll have no pre rates left. And we also funded for coal.
We had a significant, fleet and loan facility with cat, €71,000,000, which we drawn almost all of to date And, you know, as we look forward, you'll hear some discussion about Fekola expansion later, and that may necessitate bigger fleet, more fleet. And again, I think we'll probably work likely that we'll work closely with Kat as we go forward to to help finance those as well. So that's kind of an overview, of where we've come year record year, great results, and a little bit of a a sort of taste of where we're going to end up for the year. And with that, I think I'll pass you over to Bill Lytle. Senior VP operations.
He'll give you a sort of over overview of the ops for the year. Thank you.
Thanks, Mike. So this is, this is going to be an interesting presentation by me. Normally, when I'm up here, I'm talking in detail out the operations, and I spend a lot of time going over the numbers. But Clive allowed us to bring the general managers here today and the country managers. So you're going to hear directly from the guys on the ground and the women that are doing the work.
So for me today, this is more of like a victory lap. Certainly, I'm going to go through very quickly some of our development projects, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time on operations. I wanted to start with this slide right here. This is in the deck that we put out I just wanted to remind everybody that we do have 5 mines. Everyone always talks about B2Gold and Fekola.
But the reality is, is that in my opinion, in 2018, all five mines did an outstanding job, and we should be very proud of everything that they did. If you look at if you look at even the Nicaragua assets under a very difficult situation, they continue to perform and they continue to operate and they continue to do as we requested as best as they could. Maybe before I get into the slide, I know that we're going to you're going to you're going to see all of the speakers come up here, but maybe I just talk briefly about who they are, who they are and what their background is. And I'll do it based on the order. I know you've got a pamphlet in front of you identifying who they are, but starting with Fekola, I've got Mohammed Diara.
Mohammed's the country mentor. Mohammed may be stand up. Mohammed came to us during construction. He actually he came from us from the, Ministry of Mines in Mali. So he was work he was working with within the government, and was we're lucky to have him.
Thanks, Mohammed. Randy Ryker. Randy Ryker is a GM for Fekola. Randy has been mining for more than 30 years. Obviously, very strong technical background with a degree in mining and rock mechanics and an MBA Randy was with us for a long time.
He actually started out with us at the Julieta project back when we were bema. And then if you move on to the Philippines, you got Chris Acosta. Chris Acosta is the president of Filminaire, our subsidiary there. Chris, has been with us for, I think, since 2009 and basically, highly, highly educated and a graduate of MIT and the U. S, West Point, with a graduate West Point, Sitting to his left is actually Gloria Tom Clamako.
Glory is on our board in the Philippines. Gloria has also been with us for a long time, and Gloria has worked both in and out of the private sector and is very influential as far as how in this with government relations. And then the last one on the Philippines, Ramid. Ramid is also a 30 plus year minor. Been with us since the beginning, actually before B2.
And, tick it just continues to perform day in and day out in Philippines. Moving on to Otjikoto, we got Mark Daw. Mark Daw, another 30 plus year mining engineer or a minor. He's got a degree in metallurgy and geohydrology. Mark has been inside of Namibia for 30 years.
So, he certainly knows the culture there. Mark was previously the Chamber of Mines President and worked for Solvay Industries. Moving to Nicaragua, we both of our Nicaragua, general manager here, but I'll let Dale introduce those. So, because they don't speak English as well as Dale does, we're going to have Dale do the presentation. Dale is, Dale came with us as when we took over the Nicaragua assets.
Dale is a mining engineer of background, 30 plus years experience again. Dale is currently working in the corporate office as the Vice President of Operations and last but not least, Tom Lee. Tom Lee is the corporate affairs manager. Tom has been in Nicaragua for 30 years, knows the political situation there and has a graduate to stand And I guess, we're not going to talk a lot about one of the questions that always comes up in when we're talking to people is, B2 seems to do quite well on the design and construction side, how does that happen, right? What's the secret sauce is what is always asked?
And the reality is, Because, as Clive said, of the accountability inside of B2, and the fact that we have this longstanding team that's been together for 20 years, we're able to make it work But behind that is a lot of due diligence and a lot of science. And so I just wanted to recognize, and it doesn't happen very often that we do this, but I wanted to recognize some of guys from the development side. So we've got our Senior Vice President of, Development And Engineering. That's Dennis Stansberry here in the back. He's currently leading the 2 studies I'm getting ready to talk about.
You've got John Rahala here today, who's our VP of metallurgy. John's been with us since the since a couple days. And, then you've got Peter Montano. Peter Montano is our Director of Mining. And all these people will be around during the breaks.
If you have any questions from a purely highly technical side, if you'd like to talk to them. So the first project I want to talk about is the Fekola expansion study. I'm not going to go through all of these all the numbers on the slides. This is basically out of our press release. I'm just gonna give you an update and maybe still a little bit of Randy's thunder on what's happening there.
So, if you remember, we started out at Fekola We built a 4,000,000 ton per year. We designed a 4,000,000 ton per year plant. Then during construction, because it was going so well and because having such love on the resource side or on the exploration side, we decided to expand and we went to 5,000,000 tons. That project was built Through 30 months and finished up, we went to cold commissioning in September of 2017. We actually achieved commercial production by the end of same year.
So, less than 60 days. We started out at 5,000,000 tons per annum. I think Mike already pointed out or someone already pointed out, we a record year already this year. And in 2017, 1st year, we were producing, instead of 55,000 ounces, we produced more than 110,000 ounces. The ramp up's been extremely good.
Maybe unlike some other companies, Clive started asking questions immediately when he heard about potential upgrade of the resource started asking us to look at what would it take to expand. So, here we were announcing commercial production in December and in January, Clive challenged us as an engineering group to start looking at what would this thing look like if it could be expanded. So, what we did is, we took a look and because we had ordered an oversized SAG Mill, we decided we'd start out with a grinding study and metallurgy of the north. Those studies are now complete. And I think we actually put out in a press release that basically what we're looking at now is not $5,000,000 as the base case, but we think the mill with the grinding circuit can do $6,000,000 as the base case.
So we're actually going to announce and once again, stealing a little bit of Randy Stunder. In the second half of next year, we're going to run that mill at 6,000,000 tons per annum as the base case. So the first six 5.5 and then we're going to ramp up to 6,000,000. Then the study is really looking at between 6,000,000 7,500,000 tons. That's what we think the grinding circuit can do.
And then that's without adding an additional ball mill. We do have a case where we're looking at adding an additional ball mill, which would bring us to $10,000,000, but that's not the base case really. In addition to that, during the year, We also looked at what would happen with the low grade component of that. So we did a 5 day test on low grade. I think the grade was about one point 11 grams per tonne.
Ran that for 5 days at a very high throughput and found out the recoveries actually beat what was in the feasibility study. So, we're very confident that as we expand this thing up that it's going to work as designed. These studies Oh, let me just so outside of the outside of the mill, of course, we've got the mining side. The mine the mining fleet right now is absolutely maxed out at 6,000,000 tons per annum. We're doing we're doing as much as we can on the mining side.
So we are currently the resource is now done. We're doing a reserve on it. We're looking at, do we go to bigger trucks if we're going to expand? Do we increase the fleet size? We're working with cat.
By the end of the year, we'll know the answers to that internally. So by the end of the year, the plan is to present to our board a case and then over Q1 2019 to optimize that and then announce it at the end of Q1 2019. Okay. So I just talked about those. The other
may just
okay. So the first question or first comment
from the gallery was maybe should touch on the cost of that a little bit. So we're looking at it internally and what we don't know the exact number because that's what's going to come out of the study. But what we've been telling everybody, and I think we're fairly confident is that this number is going to be south of $50,000,000. We don't know exactly what numbers but that's where we think we're at. Anything else?
On the The other the other study that we're working on is Limon expansion study. So I'm not going to go into great detail on the expansion study looks like. I'm going to save that for Dale Craig. I can just tell you, with the new resource, we do have the Limon pit and the Limon resource reserve in our 2019 budget starting in July. So, we're currently pre stripping there.
In addition to that, we've got about $2,000,000 of capital that we put in basically to handle the different ore that's coming out of Limon. So at this point, we have not committed to going for the full expansion, and Dale will talk more about that. But we have committed $2,000,000 in the 2019 budget plus the pre stripping required. Masbate. So this is a slide that you always see in our deck.
The Masbate expansion I'll just say it's on time or ahead of time actually. On budget, Ray will talk about the details of that and where it's at. What I want to drive home basically is that we will be operating at Masbate in the budget at 8,000,000 tons per annum next year. So we're assuming the whole year at 8,000,000 kiakka, which is one that doesn't get a lot of attention these days. What we've done is we've now gone back to have a look at that and see if there's see if there's a higher grade case that we can get.
So, we're trying to optimize it again. We've got some people in looking at the various parameters, the various costs to see if there's a way that we can make a lower throughput, higher grade case. And that will be we'll be working on that through Q1 and Q2 next year, probably within in the middle of the year,
we'll be able to tell you
what's going on with that. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to Tom Garrigan, the Senior Vice President of Exploration.
Thanks, Bill.
So before we get going, I just want to do like Bill did, introduce a couple of people who are here from the exploration team and are a big part of the reason we've been successful in exploration. Brian Scott is a Senior VP of Geology and, technical services. He's here. And Brian and I have been working together since, well, it's been a long time. Hugh Mckinnon's VP of Geology, and he joined us, joined our team, with, Juliet in Russia way back in the day.
And then Andy Brown, who's, gonna be talking about, West Africa is, expiration manager for West Africa. So looking at the first slide here, you can see that, we've had exploration activities, in a number of different jurisdictions. And, we've been asked over the years, and certainly Clive has been asked over the years why we're spread out. And, you know, it's been discussion that Clive I've had for years. And the the main reason behind that is if we limit ourselves to a certain jurisdiction, you know, we're limiting ourselves to what we could find.
So we took a decision jointly long time ago to say, we're going to look for projects where the good projects are. You know, bearing in mind that we don't want to get anybody killed and we don't want to get into addiction where it's unsafe or we can't get our money out. But generally speaking, we keep a pretty open mind in where we look for projects and we have widespread exploration projects around the world. We have good people who are working on them, and we have good communication. So with those in hand, we feel this is the best way to look for new mines.
Drilling summary for this year, we've drilled over 250,000 meters in all the different projects. That we're working on. Projects, you know, I I won't go through them in detail here, but, you know, Regina Faso, we we continue to follow-up in, on tuaga and look for tuaga down plunge. We're looking at tuaga in areas around tuaga. We've been doing some drilling around Kiaka.
There's some other targets nearby Kiaka that have some promise in Maui. And he's going to go through Molly in detail, so I won't talk about it much here. We do have a very, as you can see, it's our largest exploration project. And in, Namibia, we continue to do work in a number of, or 3 different targets. We have, exploration going around, Otjikoto and Wolfshag, looking for the down plunge of Wolfshag and also looking, for down plunge of Ojikoto recently, we've been having some success on that.
In addition to that, we have a project called Rendu, which is just outside a trucking distance for, for Ojikoto, but represents a pretty solid exploration target for us. And we feel we have potential to locate at least a small open pit there and potentially larger. And then a project called Angania, which is nearby. Nicaragua, we all talk about Nicaragua. We've been successful Nicaragua as Lee and we've also been successful doing exploration in and around, Libertad, finding small pits, to feed the feed the mine and continue the mine life.
You know, when when, Dale comes up and talks, you know, he'll say that, Limon has had a 2 year of mine life forever. Well, it's true. Now, we've we've exploration that's that's been expanded, but the same applies to Libertad. You know, Libertad is somewhere in that range now in terms of a light, but we continue to do exploration with the belief that we can we can be successful there and extend the mine life. And last, in the Philippines, Masbate, exploration has continued around the mine site.
We're looking at problem solving and it don't not as a problem geological problem solving, not problem solving for the mine. And helping to extend mineralization in and around the current pits and also looking at, potential other targets. Last Friday remains a excellent, ground for finding more, ore for the mine. Exploration summary. The original budget we had for this year was $2,000,000.
We now have a budget of $56,000,000 for it, largely due to the expanded expiration at Fekola, which, Andy will talk about in much more detail. And then some of the successes this year, again, I don't want to rob other people's, talk. Obviously, the biggest success for us and the biggest focus for us this year was, doing an exploration drilling down plunge on Fekola, looking at expanding resource. Zandi will show you that resource remains open and we are continuing exploration along it. And then one of the other recent successes that exploration on is the Limon.
These are long sections, by the way, excuse me, for not saying that. These are long sections down the long end of the, the zones. We continue expiration at Limon. Limon remains open not only as an open pit to the north, but also with, potential underground targets, and I'll talk about those more deep, in more detail later. And last, you know, as we're talking about, you know, the strong support from the from Clive and the board to continue exploration.
You know, we we've been given the go ahead to do expiration on these projects with a result of Adi or, Fekola during construction phases or during acquisition phases. And with that strong support from Clive the board, there's been benefits of that. So there's a very strong support to exploration, and that'll continue hopefully that continues as we go forward. So 2019 in Molly, you know, we put a budget forward to the to the management team and to the board. Those budgets haven't been approved, but, at this point, I'm I don't have too much concern.
We think it'll be in the same order of magnitude as, we had this year. Expiration in in Maui will continue, to Fekola going north. There's targets around Fekola that Andy will tell you about. And, certainly, the Anaconda area will start to put more of attention on now that we've got the down plunge open pit portion of Fekola, we think, drilled off at least to inferred category. Burkina Faso, we'll continue what we're around, the Kiaka target and Towiga.
You know, that area has 10,000,000 ounces, between our projects and other projects in the area, and we feel that the area has excellent potential to find something new or to continue with the targets we have got. Namibia will continue going down on Wolfshag, and I'll talk about that a little bit more later. And then, Nicaragua, the same thing, I'll talk about that a little bit more later. We do plan have continued exploration in those projects, looking to extend the mine life and certainly at Limon looking for advancing those projects further. Masbate, we'll continue to do what we've done in 2018, near mine, extensions and then some new targets that we're looking at to round the mine or near the mine that have been drilled before.
And lastly, kind of one of my favorites is it's almost a pet peeve of mine. When Clive has talked about it, a lot. The there aren't that many new discoveries around the world these days. And, you know, a lot of it has to do with, you know, the the junior game is, has had the, you know, what kicked out of it recently. And there's, there has not been a lot of new discoveries.
So we took a decision jointly again recently to commence expiration on things that we're generating ourselves, much more grassroots projects, and also joint venturing with some companies who have to find things. And that's going to continue on, in 2019, and we'll probably be more aggressive. And as time goes on, you'll start to hear about us signing exploration deals in a number of jurisdictions as we continue with that philosophy. So with that being said, I'd like to open up for questions for everybody from the first session here. And thank you very much.
Once again, Please raise your hand if you have a question and wait for the microphone to be passed over to you.
I'll be more tuned
time later.
Yeah. Well, there's Q and A sessions throughout the day. So if there are no questions at this time, oh, Steve Butler?
Yeah. Tom, just, you haven't had expiration budgets like this, for a while, maybe this year and last year. Maybe you can comment on some of the firepower you have now, not only at the assets, but to spread your wings, as you say, to tackle some of these greenfield opportunities. Maybe you can give us a little bit more color on that, expanded approach globally.
Mean, in terms of team or in terms of, just the projects we're looking at?
Probably the projects you're looking at, but also, you know, 56 $1,000,000 potentially a gain next year, 250 kilometers, whether they have the same scope of drilling. That's, that's, that's a big change to me for, from what you've done in the previous year. Yeah.
That's a positive and that certainly shows, with the cash flows of Fekola, the support that, again, the management team Clive and the board have towards expiration and believing in us to to be able to find things. Now as far as the firepower to look at other projects, we have a number of people, that have joined us either through acquiring companies or have joined us recently as the exploration geologist. And then we have a group of young people that we constantly train through the years And we feel that these people are ready to start taking on some of these projects. But the idea behind the grassroots is to to take some shots looking for big deposits. You know, people, unfortunately, our business is seen a downturn in expiration, and we don't have the investment in the junior companies anymore that we used to have who would go around the world finding things.
So it's going to have to be like when you and I started back in the old days where the, you know, the larger companies did all the grassroots exploration. I think that's where we need to go.
Bill, a question for you, Steve Butler, GMP. You talked about 6,000,000 tons per year run rate around sometime next year. Is there much capital or not a maybe Randy may elaborate, but as much capital to get to 6,000,000 tons per year?
Much additional CapEx No. That's under current current configuration.
Team the mining rate or, I mean, you're almost there.
Basically it's increasing the availability.
If you really want to know
the truth, we can run at $6,000,000 right now, but we're still, we're still working out the availability.
Sorry, just a quick question from me. You've mentioned joint venturing with Junior's, does that include the strategic investments as well in more development developed our orientated stories rather than just grassroots exploration?
Well, we've talked about that internally quite a bit. And, frankly, I mean, there's obviously a strategy that's been used by other companies Ross, Nicole, Goldcorp, etcetera. And I think it's probably a good strategy for them, which is putting investing money in juniors. A number of them are hoping that someone finds something We have a little bit of a different approach. We may look at that a bit, but bottom line is that it's not out of arrogance, but at the end of the day with Tom and his team, we have one of the best ratio gold teams in the world as demonstrated over the last 30 years.
So we want to be the operator in exploration. And I want Tom and his group to pick the drill It's not to say there aren't containers out there. We may consider some investments as part of the process, but the bottom line is we've never paid for ounces that might be there. And I think that when you've got a team like ours, the remarkable experience they've had in success worldwide, I want our guys to be the one striking spray So we're much more likely to want to put money in the ground and earn a majority interest in a project, by spending the high risk dollars. And for a lot of juniors, I think it's attractive.
I think we're juniors, we were junior exhibition companies twice at BBMB2. We understand, and I think we've always treated them with a lot of respect. But for the long suffering junior companies, if they have good targets that we come in and earn a majority interest by spending the risk dollars that could end up owning a significant portion of less deposit, and all we got to really do is keep the lights on. So I think that's quite an attractive proposition that is Tom said we'll be exploring that more and more in just want to make one comment perhaps about the value out of expiration. And Fekola is a great example.
You know, we did something, as Tom mentioned, that's unusual, which we to do, which is a little outside the box, which was to drill the Northern extension of Fekola all the time while we were building it. I don't know if a company that really does that at the end of the day, it's not common. But we don't believe in keeping the silos of exploration and engineering and metallurgy and all those things as separate. We like to really work closely together. Bill mentioned, in terms of looking at the expansion, but if
you if you include the
half a $1,000,000,000, the US worth of our shares that we paid to take over Papia and a friendly takeover. And you add the $50,000,000 of exploration we've spent on the Northern extension over the last 3 years. $550,000,000 total. If you divide that by the resources as we see them to date, the vast majority of which we're sure are gonna turn into serves and perhaps more, you end up at around $75 an ounce between the acquisition cost and the expiration cost. And don't forget, 70% of that is actually in the indicated category.
We expect the inferred to quickly move into that next year as we infill drilling. But that's one of the reasons we're not that excited to go out and bid with other people to buy ounces in the ground. It's pretty hard to beat $7 an ounce, even though we acquired a significant amount of them So, and
I just wanted to highlight that as
a as what I frankly, one of the reasons I still do this is because of the way we do. And thinking outside the box and challenging ourselves to do things a little bit differently. We're aggressive, but we're never reckless. And I think it really shows in the way we run this company from exploration through permitting construction and running our minds extremely well all over the world. Now to give you a perspective, we have 32 employees 10 years ago, we have 6000 employees around the world today.
Yet, we run some of the safest wines in the world and really take care of all those people. We're very proud of that.
If I may continue in that direction, if you could give us a better sense of what is that pipeline of exploration targets that you're going to be prioritizing and what is now the mandate of prioritization? Is it close to current infrastructure on your tenements? Is it on the same belt? Is it different belts? Can you give us a sense as to how does the exploration pipeline look like and how are you prioritizing your attention?
I got to resist being a little flippant, you know, we don't have anything that we say, okay, it's going to be this kind of deposit. It's going to be in this belt. It's going to be in this country. It's got to nearby We have exploration in and around the mine sites for sure, and we certainly have exploration continuing in all the different countries that we have mines. But when we look on beyond where we're actually mining and looking for exploration projects anywhere.
The sole goal is to find really good deposits at a grassroots level, we don't want to be wasting money. And I don't wasting is not the right word. We don't want to be, spending money on things that are not going to be you know, really good minds. So the early stage exploration projects that we're looking at, they're all what we talk is big ass shots, you know, the things that have real, real size potential. And then the next ones up are things that, you know, we can see as, as, near development projects.
We do look at those. We do have a couple in the belt. We're in our pockets. We think have potential for development. You know, Tuega, Kiaka, and then we have projects that are even more advanced, such as Crown Milwaukee and Fekola extension.
So Our expiration is divided in very early stage looking in for really big deposits or really good deposits. And then things that are that we have to think we can get developed sooner, and then we have ones that we think are on the verge of being developing. I don't know if that answers your question.
Clive, earlier this year, you commented that Nicaragua would be, potentially a non core asset and that 2019 would be a year in which B2Gold would learn a lot about those assets. And by the end of 2019, you might have a better idea of where they fit in the portfolio, whether or not they're core or non core. I'm just curious if, as we approach the end of 2019, if you have any, updated views on that. Thank you.
Well, we've had a lot of questions over the last year. So with our rapid growth, especially with Fekola coming online about you know, assets being core and non core. What I said in, earlier this year was that if we felt that the Nicaragua mines were destined to perform in the future as poorly frankly as they did in 2017, then we likely may have centered, divestiture of those assets. We're, we're bending them into another company and letting another company run with those assets. But, and the reason I did, but the fact is that both projects were in transition, and we believe they would both get better.
The El Limon Central Zone that you'll hear more about today is a major new discovery very close to the mill that allows us to not only have a long and, in my life, but significantly more significantly better economics. It also gives us the potential when we decided to expand at Limon. So that's what I wanted to see very much if that was going to be reality. The studies, shows that it is. Limon is a much better asset now than it was a year ago.
And the Libertad, you'll hear about it a bit more about it, but the issue of Libertad has been sometimes been getting permits and how been delays for the state delays or any other reason and sometimes government bureaucracy, but at the end of the day, despite the difficulties in, in in the tragic social unrest and political unrest we've seen in Nicaragua lately as Bill alluded, these mines have continued to operate, including owner We are still, you know, we're functioning well. We're working well with the government in terms of the same ministers. We've dealt with for a long time, and we are of the permits we require. And the next big one, we're looking for is having the antenna. So Libertad's got a limited mine like as we see it today barring exploration success, which we're hopeful of in those crops in around 3 years, we would think that maybe that'll get longer.
But at the end of the day, there's a couple of good years in there as we move forward. So we will look at, continue to monitor the the projects as we get into next year. And we're very hopeful of a peaceful resolution to the current political situation and unrest that we see in Nicaragua. We love the country. We love the people.
It's been a very good success story over many years, and it's really tragic to see, recent developments. But at the end of the day, we're not in any, we're not, you know, we're not looking at any rush to sell in than the private assets at all. I'm not sure if the the smart time to sell anything would be if there's a cloud of political risk hanging over your head, at the end of the day. But I just want to echo what Bill said that this remarkable job that our our our guys have done in Nicaragua, all the people there. It's, they all wanna work, and they found ways to get supplies to the site and and to keep the mines running during a very tense situation.
Already kudos to those guys. So we're committed to Nicaragua and making those alliances the best that we can, and we'll look at that situation as we go to 19 and see where it fits in our portfolio.
Question for Moveis?
Tom, just a quick question on Gramalote. Clive mentioned that Gramalote might be back on the table Do you see additional opportunity exploration wise, obviously, in terms of, you know, looking at spending in Colombia going into 2019?
Well, let's, let's resolve Gramalote first. Certainly, Colombia has as we all know has great potential. You know, there are some security issues as we know in Columbia that, I, you know, we're not convinced that they're completely addressed yet. In around Gramalote, that's not an issue. But some of the areas where there's great potential, that is an issue.
As far as Gramalote goes, there's there's 2 other targets around Gramalote that need more drilling to get into a resource or reserve class being Trinidad and Mohanhas. And, I'm sure if, if indeed, Gramalote is a, is now a project, going forward, will be involved in doing a lot more exploration there?
If, if in fact, we end up agreeing a new model with AGA, then we would be If it's, if it looks attractive, we'll be moving we would be recommending moving rapidly to feasibility, and I've informed the that we have a crew ready to go and build that mine, if that's appropriate. Kelvin did tell me that, he met recently with the government of be the president of the entire cabinet, and he came away from that meeting. Very encouraged about the government's support for responsible mining. Think some of you know that if you flew over Columbia and someone said to you pick a spot, the best spot in the country for the 1st large open pickle, might need to pick grandma because of its low altitude, there's not a lot of sensitive crops around. There has been a history of small mining.
But it's a great areas that's relatively underpopulated for Columbia, and it has a river nearby and manpower. It's got a lot of great things going forward. So we're hoping that, this new, these new models and concepts that are being thrown around, we hope they're real. And if they are, we would have another significant asset, all of a sudden.
Okay. Well, we're right on schedule. So thank you, gentlemen. Now we'll move on to our, Fekola section of the day. And, I'd like to introduce our first speaker Mohammed Diara, who is the country manager in Mali.
Hey, good afternoon. So I'd like to talk about Mali. I'll give you, I will give you, like, a few few points about Mali first to give you, like, a idea of where Mali is, give you an idea of, what we do in Mali, let's say, controversial about the Mali, government and what's going in Mali and, basically, what's the position in Mali. So, I guess, on the first slide, just like to say that Mali is in a in the heart of West Africa. So you'll see that Mali has 7 borders.
It's a landlocked country. Which actually has, access through, I mean, to get, items in Mali for Fekola project will will to use Senegal because we don't have any port in Mali. So the preferred destination, the preferred port was Senegal because the Fekola project is situated at the west border of Mali, next to the Farley Mariva. Now, you can see that we have also been able to, bring in about, a lot of different, let's say, all of items came through Synagos. We have like a local office in Senegal, which was able to through the port, which was able to bring all the items in I mean, in Fekola, I'm sorry.
Going over the man mining in Mali, so Mali has been has a long history of mining. So back in 1300 with, different, like, artisanal mining. In the past 20 years, we've seen like a big evolution on the mining on the gold production, especially in Mali. So we have had like couple of mining codes, 91 mining codes, 99 mining code, and 2012 mining code. They're all in, they're all active in Malia at the moment, but the goal is in to to the 2012 mining code.
And, just one point that I wanted to make is because of the different mining codes in place in Malia at the moment, well, people have a tendency of thinking that there's a there's a risk in now signing up to a mining code and the government might change, or maybe probably enforce different taxes, which is actually lead not true because we've been able to this is what's creating a problem today, for the government because they actually respecting, the tax that closes. And, each company's 100 different mining codes are being left alone because, of the tax stabilization clauses. As of B2B2Gold, we are under 2012 mining code, and I think it's, the government is spreading us actually decided to move up to the latest code. I just wanted to make that very clear. At the moment, we got 9 different mines in Mali, a big Canadian investment in Mali, which, b to gold, even gold, if you want endeavor, which are all doing very, very well in Mali.
Just to let you know that, the Fekola project as 80% beach school ownership and 20% for government. So, the government is a stakeholder in online. So just to give you a quick, timeline on the project, being able to put the project on time and on budget 3 months before, the initial timeline. So in 2000 14 vehicle came into Mali and did the acquisition of Papil in 2015. We see on the timeline that, we've been able to start construction completely cammed by October November.
We had a groundbreaking money. In 2016, we, commenced, structural steel project. In 2017 commissioning and by November, we had achieve commercial production. So, we've been producing this is the 4th quarter now and, can say that February 3rd, we had the grand opening of the mine. So the president of Mali Kemp, and I was greeted by, our management team and also the executive client was there.
It was a very good ceremony. The president was very impressed with what we've done. So just to give you, I'm not gonna go to all these points on this power point mean, on this slide, but I just to let you know that the president has been elected for the next 5 years in Mali. So second term, so the risk of, MHG changes in the next thing because a lot of people talk about Africa being always changing the constitution to go to a third method. This not going to be the case.
As far as security goes, I'd just like to make a point that, we've been asked a lot of question about security. We've been very, let's say, very, I mean, try to limit the risk as much as possible because we now about, what it means for people, I mean, a lots of expatriates and, we've been very careful about security issue. But just to let you know that the mind region where we have the and other region in the West and South Malley and not at risk because all the problem is they are most likely in the north of Mali. So we've never had any problems in in the mining district for security. So, this is just like a list of the key ministers of money that we work with.
Like I think one bill introduced me said that I used to work for the minister of mines with today is the minister of finance, Mister Sisi. He's a minister of finance. We have a very good relationship with him. So so far, there's no problem as far as, like, anything with tax and binding codes and those type of things. The current minister of, mines is, Missus Lalenta.
She used to be the former director of mining geology in Mali. She actually went to a couple of a project and she went to Namibia and she came to Fekola. So there too, we have a very good relationship with her and the 3rd minister that you see is Mr. Singari who was the ex minister of mines and is actually the minister of defense. So, who actually knows about project.
So it's a very good relationship we have with him as well. So, this is just a couple of pictures with the grand open with the president and Clive in front of the gold room. Just to reiterate that the president was very happy with, what we've done in, in Fekola and is actually work on B2Gold and any investment like B2Gold in Valley is saying that Clive the whole team was welcome there because of the delivery they've done and also the timing, the what we've said we will do and what we actually done. So It's, he pressed us as a good example of, responsible company in Malawi. Now, just to let you know a bit to go to Mali to give couple of numbers here.
It's a strong. I mean, we got about 2000 employee in Malian. Now, we've reduced a lot, the number of experts, so a lot more Malian moment working. We have, like I said, we have an excellent relationship with the stakeholders, which is the ministry reason, but if you go more on like a local level on the communities, with the villages around the mine and also the decentralized authorities which the governors and the perfect office. Now, we've been able to achieve all of our, let's say, agreements with the government, which is to share all the and the share purchase agreement.
And, so far, we've, like, we've done everything, on time. And like I said, we don't have enough the number that we're producing at 100,000 ounces per year. We represent approximately about 20, 25% of the production in Mali. Which actually the the the gold production in Mali is about 8% of the GDP. And, it's the 1st export in Mali for gold.
Gold is 1st in Mali. So you need to know that Mali is the 3rd producing country in gold in Africa after South Africa in Ghana. And, we have the 1st place, I mean, as a 1st base of gold exporter in the in the region. Just like like you, I'd just like to talk about a few projects that we have in community development. So a couple of the CSR project that we started early on before the production So now we have had, the project called Afek.
It's, something done with the Canadian Canadian Government for training. And, in that regard, we've been training a lot of people in the region. I mean, in the in the community, to get more let's say, skills into building, you know, also, let's say, still, miss Henry and those type of things. Also we have a biodiversity program. I'm not gonna touch on you.
Just mention that. And then when we have, like, the project will be, the Fadoogou project and, we'll have Ken Jones talk about it later on. I'm not gonna really this now, but I just wanted to say something about, a scholarship program that we have going in Mali. So what we've done is we but, to 10 students in Mali, based on gender, also on the need business like they don't have it. They they were very good students, but they don't have any means to go to school.
So we decided to open up a scholarship program We got about 2000 application and then we took 10 students, 5 women and 5 men's, and we put them into private school in Mali. So the program about 800,000 US dollars for for the next 7 years. And that actually is is, it's a good program. Everybody's really happy with Mali. Okay.
Okay. On that Those are just a few picture of the CSR initiatives we have there. This is the Fabigo village that will be presented by Ken Jones. Those are some of those let's say, you know, the nation would give, you know, would give to the villagers and tractors and those, you know, that farming and those type of things. Yeah, on that, I will hand it over to Randy Recker.
K. Thank you, Mo. Just wanna start out. Sorry, Clive. A few photos just to start, show you the general, part of the operations, if if anybody hasn't been there.
Starting a lot, the top left row, just a picture of the grinding circuit, in the center is, is our power plant and then our signal on the right. Just going over, Bill, I think, went over some of this already. General parameters on feasibility and when when the project was started. So 9 and a half year mine life, 32,000,000 ton per year total or in in waste, mining rate that we're supposed to do. Initial 6, stages 350,000 ounces a year approx started out with a 4,000,000 ton per annum, but as, as Bill alluded to, it was increased to 5,000,000, during the construction, since that we've been doing that and and more now.
Based on that 5,000,000 ton plan, it was basically based on a 400,000 ounce per year, rate. So the construction, this is another project, same team that had built Julietta, Kupol, all the other mines, as well had now built this another one for B2, construction was done 3 months ahead of schedule. It was on budget, was done primarily in house. Only the power plant was built with using a contract everything else we did ourselves. Commercial production was was declared a year ago tomorrow.
And and that was more than 4 months ahead of of plan. And then the cost to complete 462,000,000 Now, the couple photos just of the construction on the left is our our first phase of our TSF facility. We've since done a a raise on that and got us ready through into 2021. And on the right, just the fee conveyor going into the SAG Mill. Now, going over, so a table on the left goes over.
So, just under 3,000,000 ounces of reserves at the beginning of this year. Almost 4,000,000 of resources Gold production so far in the 1st 3 quarters of this year of 333,000 ounces. So, that's 8% above budget. We plan on continuing to be at least that above budget. You can show the quarterly breakdown Q1, Q2 and Q3.
114,000 ounces in the first quarter down to, 107, but with the operation still still going very well and going strong. Mike really alluded to some of the costs, but overall, our cash operating costs $3.21 an ounce And that's and that's definitely below budget and below the guidance given, and the same $511 an ounce all in sustaining cost versus, the, the guidance of $5.75 to $6.25 and expect that to remain. Now, looking at the production a little bit more overall, and probably a bit more detail than has been given out in the past, for our ore tons and mill processed through each quarter. What first of all, I'd like to point out is in the first real four quarters of operation through Q4 of last year, through Q3 of this year, over 338,000 ounce 438,000 ounces of of gold produced so far, 95,000 to 105,000 is what we're really estimating in this quarter right now. Bringing us, and Mike, again, alluded this a little bit before, really, we expect to be now in the 430,000 to 440,000 ounce range this year.
We're also expecting the overall milling tons to be somewhere right around in 5,500,000 tons per annum. This figure just shows you what we've really mined in the year. So, in the orange sections is what we were mining in the last quarter in Q3. The focus really in this year was was in phase 3 and getting phase 4 down. And then and had finished off phase 1, phase 2.
Phase 1, phase 2 and phase 3 really provided the high grade overall that we've built the stockpiles to really allow them the mill to produce the amount of gold that we have and be well above budget. So, moving on now to 2019 and our plan. Guidance for next year, 415 1000 ounces. Milling will average, as Bill was saying, so we'll continue on about the same rate as we are right now, 5,500,000 ton per annum run rate through the first half of the year, moving on to a 6,000,000 ton per annum run rate in the second half. Leaving SRS estimate is about 5,750,000 tons for next year.
Mining is is going to be primarily now in phase 4, phase 3 is just finishing up, in the next month. And we'll continue on phase 4 and we'll start phase 5 stripping early in the year. We'll do 32,000,000 tons of of waste and 8,000,000 tons of ore. It's a pretty good strip ratio next year. The capital, no tailings expansion expected until at least 2021, maybe late 2020 start on that, but we actually have already made a bit of a start in the TSF construction.
Capital expenditures for next year. The big ones, rebuilding some of our mine fleet. It's already coming for some rebuilds and 6 new trucks that were ordered last year that were will be coming in shortly and the final payments of those. Major capital projects finishing off the the new Fadoou construction and relocation of the village and and then potential expansion into the mill. And finally, just a few more photos showing some the site in case it really hasn't been there.
So, on the left, the couple of our drills running in, in phase 4, deep than that now. And, and then the, haul road going to the east, from phase 4. And on the processing side, we've got the SAG mill and the grinding circuit on the left and then the leach circuit on the right and looking ahead at the stockpile and the reclaim. I'd like to now hand it over to Andy Brown, the expiration manager West Africa.
Good afternoon.
Alright. Today, we'll walk you through, our efforts are 2018 and, give you a bit of an idea of where we're going in the in the coming year. Starting off with their, map showing our our main exploration targets, areas of exploration in West Africa, primarily the Fekola deposits and its attendant, regional exploration program. Which includes our discovery of anaconda and recent years. And, in Burkina Faso, the Kiaka deposit and regional exploration program.
Shown there in the pale gold color is the distribution of, brilliant green stones throughout West Africa, integral part of of the, the gold mineralizing event in West Africa and our primary reason for being there. Breakdown of our budget for 2018 and, our main objectives for the year, which was the delivery of the initial resource for the Tawaga project. Bercina Faso, increasing our resources at Fekola in Mali and continuing on with our regional program through, through both Molly and Regina Faso. Significant budget for 2018, almost $19,000,000 spent in Maui. And just over $9,000,000 spent at Burkina Faso, for just over $28,000,000 total, a significant part of our global efforts, in exploration this year as I show in the, the pie charts, the right side there, the majority of our spending this year is directed at drilling.
We like to keep our our drill budgets, our our budget's drilling focused and intend to do so for the coming year. Look at the, the regional geology, in and around the Fekola district. The, the, the golden downment of West Africa over 10,000 metric tons, is the primary reason, for our our our focus in West Africa. It is truly one of Gold Provinces in the world. Just doing into the regional geology here.
Fekola sits along the Senegal Valley Shear zone, along with a number of their world class deposits. The structure itself has a recognized endowment, something in the order of 40,000,000 ounces. The the region, the jolts or the in the colored geological amount there is, an erosional window through the younger sediments in the area, shown in gray And, so what we're looking at here is an exposure of the Puerto Zork, a brilliant green stones in Western Molly. Recap of our of our exploration program, at Fekola, primarily the the expansion of our resources and upgrading of our, resources previously refined, just over 42,000 meters of drilling completed this year. Mostly in and around the Fekola deposit itself.
The, green drill collars indicate our area of focus this year. See where the northern end of the pit, the current, reserve pit, the Magento line. You can see some of the drilling of the north end of the pit itself and then obviously with resource expansion stepping northward along strike and, down plunge on the deposit. Majority of the meters were were put towards expansion of the resources and, with an equal amount, how about half that amount as infill on our inferred resources to upgrade those 2 indicated. And as part of our regional exploration in and around the deposit itself, some newly discovered mineralization in an area called Cardinal.
This was a structure that was known to us. Previous operators, Papion had done some drill limited drilling on the on the structure. So we had went back, revisited it, and, are seeing new mineralization in that structure and, in a joining new area, which was previously unknown to us, the key point here is that it's, well within five hundred meters of the existing pit boundary. So this is something we continue to drill at the moment and, will be part of our exploration focus for next year. Fairly high level view of our geology here.
The geology of the deposit, the gold deposit is, it's complex, what we're showing here on the left side are the, complexly folded, meta sedimentary, host rocks. You can see, at drill scale, there's a, an example, the core in the, lower right corner there. You can see how the the geology at the drill core scale translates to the greater, at large. It's this interplay of stratigraphy and structure that localizes, you see on the right side, the, the grade shells, the high grade shoot you have heard us refer to is, strongly controlled by this interplay of us particularly in structure. Now keeping in mind that, some magenta colored high grade chute as we move on to this long section through the deposit.
This is the this is the northerly plunging high grade chute that we, we showed in the previous section. So this is a longitudinal view looking to the west. Our main focus of exploration this year at Fekola was to grow the resources, and that drilling was focused just to the north side of or to the right side of, the purple boundary there, which shows our, our 1400 resource pit as it was previously defined. So the majority of the ounces were, were were intersected to the to the north of that, as well as the infill drilling we did between the initial reserve pit and that 1400 resource pit to upgrade our inferred resources to indicate it. The deposit with this year's drilling now extends some seven hundred meters north of our pit boundary and, is over 2 kilometers now, overall from end to end.
Drilling is underway on a step out to the north. As we continue to see mineralization north of our defined resources. Recap of our of our success with the the growing and, redefining our resources this year. Indicated resources grown by, about 790,000 ounces and, inferred resources increased by just over 1,000,000, tabulated on the right side there at 1400 gold. You can see we have about 19 92,800,000 tons at 1.92 grams for a total of, 5,700,000 ounces.
And that is inclusive of of reserves. And we're reporting these numbers on a 100% basis. 2019, we will, hope to address the inferred resources found this year and upgrade those indicated so they can make their way into our reserve base. This year's increase in resources, open the door to our, mill expansion study. The deposit remains open down plunge to the north.
Part of our regional exploration program at Anaconda, our initial resource at Anac was announced, middle of last year, 767,000 ounces of inferred, gold. And, it's been part of our program this year. Largely a reconnaissance level is a big property. You can see again the green the green callers are highlighting our areas of interest this year. Very cursory, lot of air core meters.
We're moving away from the defined, Anaconda deposit itself, which you can see outlined in the left side of the map there. And, we're moving out into new areas. We're seeing some, semi priests of, saprolite resources, in the Boomslang area. And, you can see from our highlights, our select highlights there, we're getting still continue to get, really interesting intersections in both the saprolite and in the South wide zones immediately underlying the saprolite. Looking forward to 2019, we're gonna table another, for the aggressive budget for continued exploration of the Anaconda area.
So a recap we've recently submitted our our budget proposals for 2019. As Tom had said, we are anticipating to have a healthy this year, something on the order of, what we spent, in 2018. Big chunk of that will go towards drilling at Fekola North extension. We want create those inferred resources. We wanna continue to grow the deposit to the north.
We wanna continue our, regional exploration program at Encanda. We will continue, as I said, to follow-up this newly encountered mineralization of the cardinal zone just west of the Fekola pit. And, the search for the Fekola like mineralization at Anaconda continues in
the year
ahead. Shots in the, left there of some of the early exposures of geology in the in the pit in the early days. Obviously, one of our rigs in progress and, some of the interesting, sulfide mineralization we're seeing any Anaconda region. Last but not the least, our ongoing programs in Burkina Faso currently have 2 rigs, 2 rigs in in in progress. We launched about six thousand meters of drilling just following the rainy season in mid September.
That drilling will continue through to, to year end. Focus there is in and around the, 4,860,000 ounce GACA deposit and its satellite discovery to EGA deposit, which we announced, just over a 1,000,000 ounces last year inferred So regional exploration, well underway there, and we'll continue, at similar scales into, into the new year. And at this point, we'll move on to questions.
Thanks, Andy. Is there any question for the group the Fekola mine.
Randy, you just you spoke about mining rates at, Ethoca 6,000,000 tons of ore. What you've been doing so far is because you've been mining quicker than you've been processing. You've been able to build up that stockpile, the high grade stockpile. So when you expand the mill to 6,000,000 tons, do you expect to continue to grow the stockpile, or do you expect and particularly talking about the high grade stockpile?
Yes, the low grade stockpiles will actually continue on, regardless the 6,000,000, run rate. We will build those up over the next 5 to 7 years. Continue.
What about the high grade stockpile?
The high grade stockpile is definitely coming down. Okay. It's currently about 800 1000, but it's it's high grade. It's about point 4.35 average rate right now. But it's it's a a little bit smaller of course than when you were there.
And then just to follow-up on something that Bill mentioned, when you look at resizing your equipment and looking at expanding mine rates beyond where they are, would you like to maintain that flexibility to to continue to build
Yes. The answer is we don't know at this point, right? We're just putting a reserve on the mine right now. So the studies haven't been done. So maybe we could defer that till the end of Q1 next year.
A question from Bryce Adams?
Thanks. Randy, in the 2019 CapEx numbers, I think you included an allowance for rebuilding of the fleet. Is that right? Does that seem a bit early to be rebuilding the fleet after 1 year or a year in a bit of operation?
Well, remember, we our first equipment came in in April of 2017. So we did get a good early on the mining. And, and then once you get into, well, into 2019, the hours are starting to add up on them. We've made very, very good, use of the equipment and put record number of hours, give you an idea we, we didn't get the 1st 60, 20 cat excavators in the world, but we're at the leading edge now of, of the hours anywhere in the world. So we're just making good use of the equipment.
One question that comes up a lot is, what's the upside to the recoveries that you've been achieving to date and how sustainable they are. I mean, it does come up the last few quarters. I'd just be interested to get your take on that. John, do you want
to talk about recoveries there?
Yes. Yeah, we we've actually been exceeding feasibility recovery, averaging close to 95 or 95%. I think it's 94.9% year to date. Feasibility was 92.7%. We're still a little early in the operation and we expect that recoveries will, come settle in around 9 for the sulfide ore over time.
So I just got
a question here on Anaconda. Mean, how should we be looking at Anaconda related to the expansion scenario envisage for Fekola?
That's, sorry, is that an exploration or, operations question?
Good advice, I guess. Here we are. Okay.
Sorry. Couldn't see. Would you mind repeating that?
So I'm just looking at Anaconda and obviously, you know, great success there in adding resources. I'm just trying to understand in time how that would translate or play a part in the expansion scenario envisaged for Fekola?
Well, that's a study that's currently underway. I would think
Yeah, certainly, at this point, we're not looking at them as, the projects together, right? We are doing some additional testing and some studies on Anaconda to see if we can unlock the saprolite layer as a smaller project versus if you remember the last time we were talking about it, we're looking that is a saprolitebigger project. So certainly as we continue to get into the bedrock, that is that's future expiration, but in the short term, we're looking at it from a, from a standalone saprolite project.
Question for Mohammed. Just on security, understand that most of the issues are in the north and you guys are tucked down to the south. But at Bamako, are you worried about any headline risk in the, in the near term or security really been beefed up by the government and any other entities?
Well, there's no there's always a risk for security. You know, being very, I guess, you can never say that's gonna something's gonna happen. It's not gonna happen. You know, we've been, like, let's say, we've been victim of security risk in Mali, I mean, Bamako, in particular, but, government is really trying to help on different issues. I mean, I can probably detail something like we, as far as like what we do in Bamako, once I just give you an idea of the operation.
So when people once people travel in in Mali, they will go straight to if they have to stay in Bamako for 1 or 2 days, they'd stay in Bamako, but, like, we have 2 planes. So if they need to go to site and a couple of you want to site before, and you probably see now this operation was run. So it's not the not essential people who stay in the hotel. I think we have our own guest house. We'll travel through plans to go to site, come back.
We have people that scored it back and forth to the meetings and to the guest house and different things like that. At the moment, Bamako has been saved for the past, I would say two and a half years. We didn't have any problem per se, but we've still been careful on that. And if I can add something to, at the moment, there's a discussion to get, like, possibly like a mining, mining if you want police force around the mine site. So just to expand a little bit on what you're saying now, that thing is the government is very aware of what's going on at the moment and the strength to see how can we kind of like prevent and respond to any threats coming on the mine areas for like anything has to do what's called small scale mining, anything has to do with anything around the investment that we have in Mali.
I'd like to answer the question a bit.
Yes. No, thank you. And maybe a brief question for Andy, the sulfites you showed in, in, around Fekola, the new target. I think that might have been from Anaconda area. Could you expand on that?
Is that a little bit different from what you're seeing? Is there a single pie rate there?
You've seen the court, Fekola, you can tell it despite looking at that's slightly different than than what we see as a different style of mineralization than the, main Fekola deposit. Not net really bad thing. You know, look at the variety of deposit types in the region, certainly, Randgold's, lulu operations, our character by several deposit styles of mineralization. So if anything, I think that's a I think variety is a good thing. We, that that's a fairly recent hole that that that photo was taken from.
And, it's a target. It's just part of the one of the areas around Anaconda that we'll be revisiting in 2019. So, yes, slightly different, but, it ran quite nicely.
Yeah, just expand a little bit, Tom, what Moe said about security. Obviously, gold Mining is a huge part of the economy and extremely important to the government of Mali. And work very closely with all the other mining companies and the government around security. It is interesting to note that I think as Bill pointed out, We're more pointed out that, Minister Sengari, who's the Minister of Defense now, was the Minister of Mines to the process of Fekola construction with an excellent relationship with him. And we were pleased.
Just wanted to see him go from minister of mines, but at the end of the day, he's got a good replacement. He's very familiar with us. I'm sure she'll be very very good to work with, but he went to defense, which is, which we were pleased to see because he's, he understands mining very well. He understands the importance of security in the country generally and also around the whole aspect of coal mining and expats. So I think we feel very comfortable with that relationship and the government really is supportive of securing not only their people and our people, but the mines as well.
Okay. If there are no further questions for the Maui panel, thanks, gentlemen. If you do have questions please feel free to contact me afterwards if you have any follow-up questions. So moving on, to the Masbate section of the presentation, I'd like to welcome to the stage, Chris Acosta, who is the country manor in the Philippines.
I'll be providing an overview of the Masbate gold project in the Philippines.
Mhmm.
The Philippines is located in Southeast Asia. It is an archipelago. Cease of more than 7100 Islands. It has a population of over 106,000,000. The population density is around 350 persons per square kilometer.
The Masbate Island, which is also a province, the Masbate province, where the Masbate gold project is located. Geographically is centrally located in the archipelago. Masmati gold project is the largest operating gold mine in the Philippines. It is located in the town of Roy, which is a historic mining area. The Chinese, the Spaniards, the Americans had mined in that area.
The project was operated by a Filipino company atlas Mining from 19 80 until 1994. After that, there were several companies that own the project one after the and one after the other. In 2007, CJA mining acquired the property, And successfully, it was able to develop the project. And in less than 2 years in May 2009, the first gold was poured. In 2013, with the merger of CGA and V2Gold, V2Gold acquired ownership of the property.
And since then, we do go develop itself established itself as a premium operator. In the Philippines. The entry will be the gold complimented the strong operating team that Masbate had. And this allowed me to gold and the Masbate group to, to monetize the resources of the project. At a strong team that has very good working and professional relationship with national government agencies with the legislature that's congress and the senate and even with the powerful Catholic church.
This team, which is led by Former Secretary Gloria and Klimako, who is also the chairperson of Phil Munera, coordinates closely with the Philippine Chamber of Mines and the other mining companies to promote responsible mining and the mining industry in the Philippines. When the environment and natural resources visited the mine site. We were very proud of his observations. He said that Masbate was the best mind that he had seen. We're really proud of that On the regional and local government, we also have very good relations with them.
We have been dealing with practically the same key leaders in the local government for the past for over 10 years now. So effectively, what I'm trying to say is that we do have a very good team in the Philippines. We have a very good support from B2Gold. We have support from the government as well, and we do have good relations with both the national and the local governments. This slide is to some extent related to what Clive mentioned that when we start a project, there are expectations that we have to deliver on.
In 2007, when we were just starting the project, we were helped by the Philippine government, actually not just the Philippine government, we were actually helped by the Philippine president at that time. Of course, she was an economist. She had expectations that we were being progressed to Masbate. And I believe we have been delivering on that. The contributions that we're providing to the municipality and the province I think is very considerable.
We're the largest investment we are the number one employer. We are the number one taxpayer. And in the town where we operate as Aurora, we provide more than 50% of their annual budget. And that's just the direct contribution that we make. We have not included the indirect ones through the increased economic activities and the municipality.
And because of that, the municipality of Aurora from a 4th class municipality is now a 1st class municipality. Excluding the capital city, Aurora is the only 1st class municipality in the province. Wasbate project employees close to 2000 direct and contractual employees. Of this, more than 70% come from the island of Masbate or the province of Masbate and Filipinos constitute more than 98% of the total workforce. This shows that the project really tries to optimize, to maximize what they can use locally.
Even human power. Masbate is not unionized. This is something that's quite unusual, especially in a country where organizing a union is very easy. I think this is a testament to how well the mine site management have been able to engage, to deal with and to satisfy the concerns of the workforce. We maintain a mentorship system.
This is good in making sure that the, talents, the skill sets of the more senior employees are passed on today other ones. And at the same time, Masbate is one of the few mining companies that have established government accredited training facilities. This is also a legacy project that we will have for the community. Because they will be trained regardless where they work. They don't have to work for us, but they will be provided with skills that they can bring maybe overseas in other companies and other islands.
Program. And even the social management, even this social development management program has a focus on creating jobs for the community because it's really one of the expectation from us, especially when the time comes when the mind has to close, we have to make sure that the community more or less has something to do has something to to keep them going. The budget that we have for Social Development Management Program is around $2,800,000 a year. That's dollars. This last slide is just a an illustration or or a description of one of the successful projects that we have.
It's under the PAMA program. PAMA is a Filipino word. It's translated as legacy So, this is a legacy program and this specific program is a small scale egg laying business through cooperatives. We have been quite successful in this one. We have now 14 cooperatives.
And on top of that, we did backward integration. We also have, they call it, pull it, I hope that's the right pronunciation or hand raising. And then we also did forward integration by getting into broiler production or broiler operation for meat production. And I think we even did sideward integration because some cooperatives are into duck raising and also into pig raising. The concept of this program is the company provides the capital, but over time, the cooperative cooperatives have to pay them back and whatever we recover will be used for future cooperatives.
Lastly, I'd like to announce that last week during the Annual Mind Safety And Environment Conference in the Philippines Masbate gold project received 6 awards for its environmentally and socially responsible mining operations. I will now be followed by Ray who will provide an update
I'll provide you with a production update through to the end of the third quarter for 2018 to start with. As Chris touched upon, we employ about 1900 people at the mine site. Roughly half contractors, half direct workforce working for us. With such a large workforce, we're proud to say that in October this year, we clocked up 3 years. LTI free.
I think anywhere around the world. That's that's quite a considerable achievement from a safety perspective. Also, on the environmental side of things, we, continue to update our certification for ISO. We're now 14,001, 2015 certified. Fair bit of significance placed on this certification the the local regulators.
It gives them confidence that, we are a responsible mining operation and that we do things the right way through 2018, we operated, through to the end of the 3rd quarter, on 2 principal ore sources. Anyone familiar with the project understands, we we typically have a main vein ore deposit and Colorado. At by the end of quarter 3, we had, completed Colorado pit to final design. So now, that's we we accelerated the mining of pit basically to avoid any wet season issues, being in a narrow pit during the typhoon season in the Philippines. So we're able to accelerate, operations in the pit.
We did that partially by mine scheduling. We we managed to mine out the northern end of the the pit which offered up some in pit dumping opportunities. So we we benefited from short hauls, quicker turnarounds. And overall, on the main vein side of the operation. The, floor areas are a lot bigger than than what we've worked through in Colorado.
So we were able to improve on excavator productivities. We're getting good fragmentation from our blasting, you improve our blasting, you know, processes. And so we're through main vein, we're operating on stage 3 and stage 4 of of that pit. It also now offered us up an opportunity for predevelopment of Montana. Montana becomes one of our primary ore sources into 2019.
So we've been able to get a head start on on that. And from a cost perspective, our costs are pretty well on budget, but obviously we've had quite a a benefit on additional, production ounces through the year. So our unit costs have have been considerably lower as touch upon Dule earlier. From a process plant point of view, similarly exceeding its budget predictions, recovery currently 7% ahead of, budget. Some of that is, Colorado Pit just keeps on giving.
It it maintained its designation as ox right through to the to the end. So we, benefited from 62% oxide versus a budget prediction 35% oxide material. The recovery block model that we operate by that does our predictions is from wide space drilling. So what we've what we've seen certainly, in the 4 or 5 years that we've been running it is that it tends to predict slightly conservatively. We we've done updates again, for next year's budget predictions to try and get the, recovery predictions closer, through our rock model prediction and what we actually see through the, process plant.
Similarly, grade to the mill 6% higher than budget. Some of that's come about, Colorado pit as we've, mined it to final design. We hone in on the main ore body which was mined by previous operations by underground methods. All of the, major stopes have been material for us. So we get a benefit of additional, high grade ore out of that, out of those previously mined underground operation which, what it's done to quarter 3 to date is displaced some low grade that we scheduled to feed through the mill.
So we haven't had to feed any load grades so far this year. Throughput again, 4% up on budget. That's largely because of the higher oxide content better fragmentation. And overall, we're 22% on production ounces ahead of our budget. Which has said, blends itself to the positive impact on our cost profile.
So year to date, we're about 165,000 ounces. We had a revised guidance put out, with the 3rd quarter results. So we're now targeting 200,210,000 ounces. We believe we'll be at the upper end of that guidance range. Our production is fairly evenly spread quarter on quarter.
As you can see, the the cost profiles, 25 percent below budget predictions. We expect it to come in with cash costs around $700. We're sitting just over, 500. So around the $5.40 mark with, estimates for full year between 545550 5, sorry, $595 an ounce. All in sustaining costs, again, were a busy year doing an expansion on the process plant, but we've managed to control all in sustaining costs.
They are similar margin below budget. 26 the 26% for the quarter, 23% year on year. We expect somewhere between 7.88.30, as we finalize all our capital for the year. Quarter 4 predictions, as I said, we expect to, mine 8a half 1000 tons of ore thereabouts for the year. Grade somewhere between 1.1,1.2, overall, total movement will be about 37,500 tons.
The process plant will put through between 6,970,000 tons this year based on the favorable, all conditions that we've we've seen, through the end of the third quarter. We expect recoveries to sit somewhere around the 74% to 77% mark through the year and 200,210,000 ounces. For 2019, we were expecting a similar sort of year to this year, from announced production, profile. However, one significant change for us is that our mill expansion will come online and we expect to achieve 8,000,000 tons, through next year. The expansion generally the production, equipment will come online right at the end of 2018 or search in the 1st month of 2019.
We do have a couple of tidy up jobs and non production components that will continue on through the 1st couple quarters of next year. Mining for next year focuses on, main lane stage 3, which we're currently now main lane stage 4, which we've opened up. We'll move back into the HNB East, section of the main lane pit and we also, start all production from Montana through next year. So we'll move about 33,000 tons all up 20 1,000,000 tons of waste, 6,000,000 tons of ore, leaving a shortfall of 2,000,000 tons of ore, which will source from stockpiles. For those familiar with our project, we tend to have tailings development ongoing, year on year based on heavy rainfalls, through the Philippines.
We will finish, stage 11 by the end of this year. What we have been able to do is tune up our water treatment plant, which now defers, stage 12. It originally scheduled to commence next year, but it now can be pushed out to 2022. Obviously, offering some, to the project. We will continue with our permitting, road rerouting and everything for the next stage just to be prepared for when that comes up.
Most of our capital expenditure for next year, focuses on land acquisition for the expansion of the tailings facility, and also, will be doing some rebuilds of mining fleet. The 2 major production excavators are due to be rebuilt next year. We have the benefit of an additional digger in the fleet that's due to be phased out that will continue to utilize through the year whilst those rebuilds are ongoing. So there will be no pack to mining rates. So Montana South, is is the the new area for us next year comes into production.
It's a higher grade, better recovery material than what we get from main veins, so positive impact to our, to our processing budget for next year. The expansion,
It's
a marginal expansion in the scheme of things from a capital perspective. About $26,000,000. The major component of that is a 6 megawatt ballmill ballmill is slightly oversized for what we need. So we have got a bit of, capacity up our sleeve, for for later in life. The, pebble crusher gets upgraded, with the expectation that we do get into harder oil conditions into the future.
We put in another stage of tailings pumped. We put in water transfer and slurry transfer pumps, additional cyclones, convey our upgrades and we are splitting the illusion circuit to be able to turn turn our carbon around quicker. We expect, as mentioned earlier, to commission, certainly within January. We've allowed a couple of months for ramp up in our, you know, budget predictions at present, with that start update in mind, we'll be ahead of schedule. And we do expect to come in marginally under budget as well.
Open you up to q and
Thanks, Ray. Are there any questions for the Masbate panel?
Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Just a quick one from me on the, on the 2,000,000 tons of stockpiled ore that you intend to process in 2019. Could you share with us the average grade of that and with an an oxide component to that as well?
Greater the low grade stockpile sits around 0.55to0.6 It's been one of the major drivers behind doing the 8,000,000 ton upgrade was to be able to successfully and economically treat that material. What, what the, upgrade does for us now, bringing it online now is it stops us growing those stockpiles, and we can start drawing drawing from them. So positive impact overall on your life of mine.
Just a question on 2019, related to the oxide sulfide oil mix, obviously a blending of three components there, what should we be looking at from a models perspective?
From a
oxide and then a sulfide percentage
oxide most most of the low grade we feed will be oxide. So at least 2,000,000 tons of oxide plus one we get out of the pits. Mainland stage 4, Montana both contain oxide components as well as HMB East. So we're probably running about 35 percent oxide through the year.
Okay. If there are no further questions, we'll move on to, environmental and social governance. And, presenter is Ken Jones, Ken.
Okay. I'm pleased to go share with you our HSE performance. And how we manage risk, therapy to gold. So the health, safety, and well-being of our workers, of our contractors, of the visitors to our operations, and to the communities, is for B2Gold. We believe that all accidents are preventable, and it is our responsibility to provide a safe place to our workers so that they can report home every single day.
And with that, we are current in our 3rd consecutive year without a fatality at any of our operations. And we've been able to achieve that with the construction and commissioning of our Fekola mine. Currently in a significant mill expansion, our mozz body operation. Other, high risk activities, we have a a long track record of being able to accomplish and manage our our workforce to achieve these, outcomes. And very often, in areas and with workforces that little or no training, and little experience, able to ride them with the training, and supervision so that they can perform their job safely and report at home every day.
Our goal ultimately is 0 harm to our people. And over the last 5 years, we have an excellent end and be able to reduce our lost time injury frequency rate over 70% from 2014, to this year. And throughout that that period, we have significant stretches. Ray touched on, just last month, hit 3 years without a lost time injury at the as body operation. Earlier this year, we hit over 2 years, at the same performance at our Fekola operation.
And we regularly hit 5, 6, 7 months approach a year at all of our operations without a lost time injury. That downward trend also applies to all injuries at our mine sites. This year, in 2018, our total recordable injury frequency rate is also seeing a significant reduction. And one question that we always get is, how does this compare to our peers in the industry. Agnico Equal reported in 2017 that there are LCI at 0.9.
I
am gold reported theirs, at 0.5. So I'm proud to say that b 2 gold, outperforms, some of our peers in the industry and even with some of the best operators, in the mining industry. And so how do we accomplish this? It, of course, starts at the top We have in place a set of HSE policies, and these are approved, by the CEO of our company. And they dictate the commitment to the protection of our people and to the environment in the places where we operate.
And our executives ensure that we have the resources available so that our mindsights can meet those commitments. We also have then an internal set of HSE standards and guidelines that outlines requirements that we want our minds to meet, to be able to meet our commitments. These these standards and guidelines are based on international best practice. They're based on ISO standards. They're based on the cyanide code based on IFC standards.
And then we go out and we externally audit all of our operations every single year with independent experts. And then final piece of that is to report, to report to you, to report, in our annual reports and other disclosures, what our risks are within the company and how our man those to bring them down to an acceptable level. A little bit about our environmental performance, happy to report that we we do not have any trend of significant environmental incidents at our operations, both this year and last year, no significant environmental incidence to report. This picture on the right is a picture of a waste rock dump at our Maz Body Mine, showing progressive rehabilitation that we we perform at this mine. We immediately, revegitate and stabilize the slopes of our facilities, so that when we are done with this, waste rock dump, it's physically and chemically stable.
This reduces our costs, reduces our long term environmental liabilities, and ultimately, produces a facility in a mine that we can walk away from without any long term commitment. We're currently, expanding our third party review of tailings management facilities. Over the last couple of years, some of the disasters, in other parts of the world, in Brazil or even in British Columbia, where we're based, has led to increases in, 3rd party review of tailings management, operations. We're currently incorporating that into our practice And then a couple of other environmental initiatives as as we mature our our programs and our systems. We we're increasing our our water accounting frameworks, for external reporting so we can better manage our water use and understand our our water, consumption intensities, their operations.
And currently, right now, we're actually completing our 1st greenhouse gas emissions estimate at our Otjikoto operation that will allow us to to understand how much, emissions we are putting into the atmosphere and how we can work to reduce that in the future. Here. I'd like to share with you these last couple slides. I just wanna some of the highlights of some of the specific initiatives that we have, B2Gold in HSE and CSR. And this is the area where where I think that B2Gold really, can go above and beyond, just our minimum commitments and and, protection of new environment.
One project, that's been touched on is the relocation of the Fiduga Village at the goal mine. And one key item for this was when we acquired Papiola Resources, the Fekola project was already permitted. And it was permit without the requirement to resettle, the Fadoopah village. But we immediately recognize that, there would be negative impact to the people if they remain, next to the mind. And so the executives and the board of directors approved $23,000,000 project to to resettle these people.
And so, over 900 houses, 3300 people in total have been a part of this relocation, and it's been done to international best practice. And what that means is it's done in a in a transparent and participatory manner with the people that are being moved. There's multi stakeholder engagement team and committees to ensure that everybody has representation and that people when they do move, move into a better, quality of life. The Fuduga Village is actually being completed just now. And, I believe the first, people will move in April, of next year.
And another key thing about the project is the workforce that is building the Paducah Village is actually a local workforce that has been trained to not only build in the skills and the trades, to carry that into other parts of their lives, but to give them ownership, in the village that they're moving into. Another key component at the Fekola project is biodiversity. Again, when when we acquired the project, fully permitted, there were not many commitments, to biodiversity conservation. And we recognize this as a potential gap. And so we did some investigation, did some additional studies did find that there are some priority species, near the project.
And so over the last 2 years, we've been conducting additional studies, and right now, we are developing and implementing, conservation measures aimed at those priorities species around our project. Our Moss body gold project. As Chris Acosta mentioned, the Philippines is heavily populated area. Our mine site is a heavily populated area within within the Philippines. That high population density has led to impacts that we have, are there to restore the ecosystems and, some of the livelihoods, to the people in the area.
In the marine environment. The first is a mangrove rehabilitation project, over the last 6 years. We've rehabilitated and planted over 200 hectares, of mangroves and over 900,000 plants, with a success rate, of of survival of those plants, between 80 85 percent, which is much better actually than other programs, in the field means. And what that does is, it improves water quality in the bay. It it reduces the loss of sediment to erosion.
And it and it mainly, improves fishing habitats and and fishing for for the livelihood of the people in the area. The other project, in the bay is the installation of, at coral reef propagation. Area under local ordinance, working in in conjunction with the local communities. And within that marine area. We've, installed over 1200 reef balls.
And what these are, these are concrete domes that we place bottom of the ocean floor. And then on those domes, we we install, over 45100 so far to date. Coral installations. And that, along with the patrolling of of of these waters to reduce fishing, has led to, an influx of of marine life again that hasn't been seen in the area, in 2018, we've, earlier this year, commissioned, a 7 Megawatt solar power plant. Won't touch much on this, the country manager in Namibia, Mark Dahl, we'll we'll provide a little bit more detail later.
But basically, it allows us to reduce our fuel consumption, reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, to the atmosphere, and reduce costs, you to look at renewable energy, resources or or installations such as this, in the future, potentially at other patients. On the CSR front, in in Namibia, we've worked with a group called the development workshop, Very interesting group as an NGO, and they work in the realm of, informal housing It's a it's a severe issue, affecting maybe affecting our workers, affecting our communities. And what this group does is works with municipalities to, provide land, and then the developed workshop surveys, installs roads, installs services such as water points, and then sells titled lots to low income to move ins. They've received a lot funding from B2Gold, from the Namibian Chamber of Environment, and it's been an excellent partnership for us to be able to prove the livelihoods, in lives of the people, in the areas where we operate. The last, mine I'll touch on is our Lalory Retide mine.
Over the last 3 years, we've had a significant water distribution project with the people in the Santa Domingo community. We've we've supported, the national water company, in phases, to improve and expand their their potable water treatment system, through everything from design, water treatment plant is, construction installation, piping and and distribution. And to date then, we've, helped improve the plantation and health over 7000 individuals in the San Antonio community. And so In closing, I'm I'm pleased to to be able to share this HSE performance with you. And and B2Gold is proud as as we have transformed into a a world class, company and mining company in the aspect of, of, of course, production, ounces, and costs.
We've also been able to to become a leading HSE performer and CSR performing, at the same time. So with that, Any questions or?
Ken, can you just touch on the solar power for Fudougou? And in fact, we've trained the people to put those solar panels on
Solar Pan power at Fidugou?
Yeah. The Solar Panels at the house in Fidugou.
I'm not certain if I'm not familiar with that, Bill.
Yeah. Maybe I'll take it. So as we developed new Fadougou, one of the concepts that was asked for actually by the community we agreed with was that we each individual house is going to have a solar panel on the roof. Each individual house will have lighting and the municipal buildings also will have solar panels. So basically across the entire facility and this was mentioned during the grand opening by the Minister of Mines, It's probably the first or we were sure it's the first fully electrified village in Mali will be new Fudougou That was all done by local workers that have gone through our training program with Afek to learned solar installation.
And so it's it's local workforce installing electrical solar panels on their houses in new fadougou.
That can be a bit of
a game changer in Africa. If you've ever seen a satellite photograph of Africa at night, you'll see the lack of lighting on villages. So this is a really cool project that I think could really grow into something not just in Mali but elsewhere.
Okay. To the audience, is there any questions for your Ken on our social programs and health and safety? Okay. Thanks very much, Ken. So unlike a lot of events, we're running ahead of schedule.
So we, we're going to take a bit of a break now about 15 to 20 minutes. There's some refreshments across the hall where you had the buffet. And you're welcome. To do that, and then we'll signal you when it's time to come back in.
Ladies and gentlemen, I know we're running a little bit ahead schedule here. Ladies, Jim, if I connect
Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen. We're going to start back, with the presentations and the webcast in about 60 seconds. So if you could take your seats, we'd appreciate it. Again, we are running a bit ahead of schedule. So if this persists, we will simply start the cocktail reception of the bit early.
So we encourage you to stick around, and you can interact with all the people, from B2, the managers, and, other executives. So probably around 45 seconds, and we'll start the webcast. Okay. So on to the second half of, our investor day, we're going to start off with the Otjikoto mine, and, presenting today will be Mark Daw, the country manager and managing director.
Alright. Good afternoon, everybody. Gonna talk to you about Namibia. This thing to work. Alright.
We we know Namibia as some Africa facilities. It's a really easy country to live in, a really easy country to operate in, one of the lowest population densities in the world. In fact, it's the 2nd it's got the 2nd lowest population density in the world in terms of countries. As far as territories are concerned, if you include Greenland, it's the 3rd lowest population density Greenland has, out of interest, one person per square kilometer, Mongolia has 2, and, Namibia has 3. And a bit of useless information for your Canada has, 4, and it's in the 9th position.
So we've had a strong history of mining in Namibia. It's a it's a primary industry based economy. And of course, it's geographically very close to South Africa, which has been one of the strongest mining countries in the world. So a lot of mining technology, a lot of mining equipment comes from South Africa. Makes it very easy to operate there.
Mining players are a really important part of the economy. It's the largest sector of the GDP. By far. But the great thing about Libya is the stability of the government, fiscal stability, sovereign stability, everything about it is, is 1st world. And it happens to be a really good country to live in as well.
Maybe also encourages foreign investment the, government rolls out the red carpet to investors. I think when B2 came to maybe in 2013, as I'll show you in one of the next slides, They're really impressed by the reception they received by the government from the government as well as the local mining community, the Chamber of Mines. So it really is a a great place to operate. Mining corporate taxes sitting at 37.5%. The, royalties on gross sale at 3% with an extra 1% export levies, so a total of 4% taxes on gross sales.
The tax regime is it encourages investment because, the government tries to allow for the repayment to couple expenditures as quickly as possible. It's in the process of actually reviewing that right now. And while it reviews the repayment on capital or the recoupment of capital from the investment it has been engaging very well with the private sector through the Chamber of Mines and other private sector represented bodies. So it's a very consultative government. We have good national infrastructure, railway line doesn't work as well as it could, but it's, in the process of being revamped as well.
Tar Road, very close to our operation, 3 kilometers away. And, as far as online is concerned, we have extensive groundwater reserves. The country is typified by having a lot of dry rivers. There's a couple of rivers up right on the northern border and one on the southern border of the orange river, but all the other rivers are femoral, which means that, the only flow during heavy rains. But, despite that, a lot of the water over the past 1000000 years has gone underground.
So we have massive underground reserves of water. In fact, we have an excess water on the mine site. At Otjikoto Mine, we, generate our own power, 24 Megawatt HFO plant, which you'll hear shortly, we've, augmented with a solar plant 7 megawatts of solar. It's quite a well known plant because of some of the technology we're using. I'll discuss that a little bit And as far as infrastructure is concerned, we also have a deepwater port is considered to be one of the most efficient ports in Africa, the Office Bay port.
So as far as the mine is concerned, 2011, B2 became interested in in Otjikoto Mine. They, did a deal with Orx Gold Corporation. By 2013 in April, we had the official groundbreaking ceremony at a mere 18 months later, The mine was commissioned in November 2014, and the first gold pour was in December 2014, which is an incredible story First commercial production was was achieved 2 months after that in February in September 2015, correction 2017 that was we we expanded to 3,000,000 tons per annum. And we now have a capacity of around 3,400,000 tons per annum. As of 2018, we should be achieving that.
So Namibia was ranked as the best country in Africa as far as mining investment that should read, is concerned, several rating organizations with it, Namir, and decided the most attractive country in Africa to to invest. So, B2 certainly made the right decision by coming to Libya. As I said, extremely stable government, the chamber of mines in Libya is actually heading up the chambers of mines of Africa right throughout Africa. It plays a pivotal role and, the mining industry's association, Miasa of Southern Africa is is actually headed up the CEO of the Chamber of Mines. I've personally been very involved in the Chamber of Mind since its inception, and I think it's, very effective advocacy body both, towards the government as well as towards other sectors of the economy, making sure that any policy promulgation is sensible and, we don't run into any trouble with, you know, government ministers that, decide to change the regulations and and, the rules but certainly pertaining to mining.
So the government works very, very closely with the mining sector. Now as far as as far as, the construction of Otjikoto is concerned, as BTGold always does, We used our own construction team over 130 expatriates were employed to build what you call a great success story. As I said, within 18 months, it was commissioned. And the idea of the team was to transfer as many skills as they possibly could to the local Namibians, and this day indeed did. So at this stage, if you look a little bit further down the slide, we we have, 1.7% our employees are only 16 or non Namibians.
But of those, there are many people on domicile or permanent residents. And so, we only have nine people on work permits, which is less than 1% of our total workforce. The skills at Otjikoto Mine are, I think world class That's the reason that Randy and the construction team wanted to get millions to go and build the mine in Mali. So we had, at one stage, over 120,000,000 building the mine in Mali. And they are many artisans from the Libyan Institute of Mining Technology are being told not to call them artisans here.
It's, apparently, their trades in the Canadian North America lingo. And so we actually support the Namibian Steel Mining Technology more than any other operation, any other business in Namibia. We, had over 60 tradesmen employed at our mine on both on job shadowing and permanent positions. And we provide a lot of financial support towards the limited Institute of Mining Technology. We also concentrate a lot on on, tertiary education We have 7 full time bursaries for universities in South Africa and Namibia.
And we have a pretty advanced leadership development program. We call it the hyper program, the high potentials, where every headed apartment has been tasked to seek out individuals of high potential many black Namians that would otherwise fall through the cracks and not be able to be developed. And so we're really accelerating the advancement of of the guys. We replied what we're doing in terms of training and development. As far as our CSR work we call it CSI corporate social investment.
It's a better name for corporate social responsibility because we believe that we are investing in the country. And if you invest in something what you're implying by that is that you're getting something back. You're getting, you're getting an improved country and improved productivity of the workforce One of the greatest projects that we've managed to achieve is the creation that's a Peter Gold Initiative of the Mobin Chamber environment. Miden Chamber of Environment in the last 2 years since its inception has become the one stop shop for the government to talk to all of the NGOs, the on governmental organizations in the business of conservation and, environmental protection. But not any of that.
They also do because Libya is such a wild country pretty much like Canada actually where the environment and livelihoods are intertwined. You can't, talk about one without also talking about the other the moving chamber of the moment also supports a lot of social projects, livelihoods projects, and whatever we put into the moving chamber of terms of our, support for the fixed costs of the of the organization is not just about the green environment, it's also developing people, life skills and and that sort of thing. So I could go forever about the moving chamber of environment has literally become the singles, stopping point for the government to talk to the environmental sector. Environmental sector to talk to the government. As an example, a lot of the conservation initiatives in Namibia, which are world class, such as the, the conservation of the Black Rhino, the pangolins, cheetah, leopard line, and what's the thing it is, are generally in great abundance in Namibia.
A lot of the groups are competing for the same funding from various, supporters and, donors. And because they're competing for that same funding, they never spoke to each other about the projects that they're working on and a lot of the scientific work that's been done was never shared. And as a result of that, you know, the projects weren't as efficient as they could have been what the Arabian Chamber environment has done is it's brought them all on one one umbrella, and it's got them all talking to each other, and and they actually pretty much all of the groups meet at our education center. We have a very large education center at the mine at our Otjikoto Nature reserve And on a regular basis, we support these organizations with accommodation with food with whatever is required in order to make their organizations run much more effectively and more efficiently. Great achievement of the turbine chamber environment is its seed funding for a lot of the major projects, whether it's a developed workshop looking at.
Ken mentioned that briefly, looking at low cost housing or its, conservation of the Rhino, for instance, we often provide through industry the seed funding and then the banks come in and all the other sectors of society chip in and and we we find that can very easily fund a lot of these very large projects. So a bit more about the operation itself, The design grade is 1.42 grams a tonne, and design recovery 95.6 grams a tonne, perhaps one of the defining features of of Otricota mine is our actual recovery sitting at 98.6%. I've just checked that figure. It's still sitting at 98.6% actual recovery. A metallurgist, that's a figure that's unheard of in mining, as you would know.
So the, the gold production split between gravity and each, the gravity section takes out, you know, 40% and and more often of the the gold. As I mentioned before, the plant is upgraded to 3,500,000 tons per annum. We have availability of around 94%, which is which is really good. We're usually exceeding our targeted availability. I'm not going to get into the metallurgical work indices there.
This is a graph of the production statistics in terms of mining production. You can see as our metallurgical production throughput has increased from 2,500,000 to 3,400,000. We've also had to increase our mining production. So from 150 odd 1000 tons per quarter, which is around 45,000 tons a day, we've ramped up to over 100,000 tons a day. You can see there 300,000 tons per quarter.
So that's that's quite a good story. In terms of gold production, you've you're all aware of the fact that we're up are, targeted answers of between a 160,170,000 you can see there are around 40,000 ounces per quarter. This year, generally above budget since the start of the operation. Recoveries about budgets, the gold production above it tonnage milled and the vertices above budget. Just drilling into the figures here.
So for 2018, we're looking at, production of 122,000 so far, which is 3% above budget. That's up to qq3. The annual guide I said, was between 160,000 to 170,000 ounces. The cash costs below budget by 3%. For the for Q3 and for the year to date, we're looking at, below budget by 4%.
So, well, within our guidance, all in sustaining costs for Q3 at 650 yard. And for the entire year 2018 or year to date, it's sitting at 747, which is all below budget by by 2%. In terms of, q 1 production, Q1 and Q4 production, I'll just look at the 2018 estimate without running through the different quarters. So about 8,000,000 tons, tons of mines, I beg your pardon, 8,000,000 tons of ore mined, 37,000,000 tons total mine including waste. That's with 29,000 tons of waste, 29,000,000.
And, process tons, 3.4to3.45 1,000,000 tons, which is, above our target, greater than 1.5to1.6. And as I said, recovery 98 to 99 country 98.6 recovery. So we're on target to achieve our guidance. It's pretty much the same thing. Just interested me when I, looking at 2019 production pretty much the same it was for 2018 between 160170, with, again, tonnage milled of 3,400,000 tons a 98% recovery, which we hope to beat again of around 98.5, 39,500,000 tons of waste.
To be, mined and 3,400,000 tons of high and medium grade ore. It might look like a high strip ratio, but we also, as as with Masbate, we have low grade ore that we're stockpiling for future years as well. So it's not the strip pressure. It's not as bad as it looks there. In 2019, an interesting feature will be that we will be looking at bringing contract liners to to extend the mining production on a day by day basis, taking it from around 106,000, which we believe is our capacity with our current equipment to 125,000 tons a day.
And that is to accelerate the removal of waste so that we can get into the ore at, especially the Wolfshag zone. Capital expenditure for 2019 is mainly going to be rebuild to the mining fleets. We've, obviously been operating now for 4 years. And a lot of mining features coming up for major components interventions. But we'll also be getting, 3 trucks and the excavator, we're looking at a fleet management system.
We currently already have a, fatigue management system that's working very well for us. Briefly on the solar project. This has attracted a lot of attention internationally. I spoke last year at the Mines And Energy Conference about, this particular project. It's a 7 megawatt plant using thin film caterpillar thin film technology, which is 1st solar.
We chose thin film because we'd evaluated all of the other types of, panels, the polycrystalline, and, first solo claimed to have had a breakthrough in terms of technology as far as the longevity of the thin film technology is concerned. So they gave us 20 years, guarantee And, the plant is performing. It's exceeding the targeted performance according to our feasibility study. So 62,400 panels. It's a huge plant.
What's interesting about it and and quite unique in the world, we don't believe there's any other plant in the world at this stage. It's running a fully autonomous synchronized, hybrid system whereby the engines, the epic engines. There are 12 CM32s, 1 Megawatt, sorry, 5 Megawatt engines will be stopping and starting according to the server. Irradiation. So as the cloud comes along and we find that the, power generated by the cell plant is not sufficient, the, engines will start up automatically initially the high speed engines and then, the larger engines will be started.
So We initially had some teething problems getting that that fully autonomous synchronization sorted out. That's obviously ground breaking its cutting edge. So one would expect to have some teething problems, but it has, exceeded our expectations. So it's doing extremely well as far as that's concerned. Now interestingly, we have saved it's not on the slide, but I asked her to mention that we saved 2,100,000 liters of HFO fuel Since we started the plant and it's only in May, we started it wasn't fully commissioned in May, but, that means that it's exceeded the target, the feasibility fuel savings significantly.
We also have produced, 9a half 1,000,000 kilowatt hours since commissioning, and the target was 8.8 by the end of November. We we should have achieved 8.8 in tons. So on the whole, a highly successful project. Thanks for listening. I'm gonna hand over to Tom on the exploration side.
Thank you
Mark.
So as I said earlier, I'm going to talk briefly about the exploration that we're doing in Namibia. We're focusing on 3 different targets in Namibia, 2 around Ojikoto, and then a target called Rendu, which is about a 100 kilometers to the west of, Ojikoto. Dindu is, is still an early stage project, from our perspective. It's, full nose hosted, coarse gold mineralization, very much like you see in other parts of the world, related to shales, cut by shear zone. Mineralization we've had today is, is, you know, we're starting to define a body that has continuity, but at this point, it's not big enough to turn into a project, but we're fairly optimistic that at one point it's going to become a project for us.
And certainly the fellows in Mali are very excited about it. The main thing I would like to talk about, though, I'm sorry, just before I switch the other, you can see on this map, there's a a project to the south of Otjikoto in Ghana. It's a project joint venture we've just recently signed, and we expect to start expiration on that year. We haven't done any work of any majority yet there. So the one I really like to talk about for, Namibia is Otjikoto and Wolfshake.
Expiration we did this year at Ojikoto, down plunge. We did some infill drilling on some of the edge drilling or the edge previous drilling that was done at Ojikoto we found with infill, we started to get a better definition of high grade shoots. Now, you see this in this map as a whole 492 had almost seven grams over twenty two meters in between two holes that had very little mineralization in them. So we're now seeing that Ojikoto also has a potential a Wolfshag for underground potential, and we will focus some of our exploration in 2019, try to follow that up. And then you look at the Wolfshag part of this map also in the there's a long section and there's the plan map.
If you look at the long section below, you can see that Wolf segment realization just keeps on going below the planned pits. And we don't know where the final pits are going to go. They constantly change depending on economics. But you can see below the $1400 pit, for a Wolfshake, we still have, I think it's, excuse me, almost 200,000 ounces at close to 5a half grams, that we feel has underground potential beyond the open pit life of Wilshire. So, expiration in 2019 is going to focus on trying to expand that and get a better definition of it.
You can see the 2018 expiration on that. Down fairly deep. We had the best hole was, almost 7 grams over eight meters, certainly within, you know, underground mining potential. So I think the future for Wolfshite from the side is to continue to follow it down plunge, get a better idea on what can be mined underground, and then look at turn that over to Peter and his crew to see what we can mine open pit and what we can mine underground. And that's, all I really have to say for Ojikoto.
So questions for Namibia?
Thank
you Yes, question on the recovery rates for Q4 on page 109. So I see that the recovery is a little bit lower than the rate for Q1 to Q3 and that's despite the grade being a bit higher in Q4, the mill grade. What's the reason for that lower recovery?
Recovery?
Yes. I'm just looking at page 109. Slide 109. The recoveries for Q4, it says 94 to 95. You see grade, the mill grade is a little bit higher.
What's the reason for that being lower than the Q1 to Q3 levels?
That's actually wrong. It should be it should be 98.
Okay. Perfect. Thanks.
It's wrong. We'll point it out.
Excellent.
We're sticking to pretty consistently 98, and a half percent recovery. It does get affected by the sulfide ores. If we have very high sulfides, very rich ore, we find that we have to blend out the ore with oxides. And get the recovery back up again, but we're expecting the same sort of recoveries in the final quarter. Thanks.
Good catch. We always put 1 or 2 mistakes in to see if you guys would be on attention. Still one more.
On the, on the recoveries exceeding expectations towards 98% for visibility of 95. Anything special you guys did in the gravity circuit in terms of the design or was that just conventional?
I'm gonna pass that over to either Eric or John. I'm a metallurgist, but I spend too much time with politicians these days.
Yes, Mike, on the gravity circuit, we process 100% of the ball mill circulating loads. So It's it maximizes the gravity recovery, which runs around 65% of the mill feed gold So that's the reason for the high recovery. And then the remainder is recovered through the leach circuit.
Okay. And a quick question for Tom. Is there potential for another parallel panel below Wolfshag in your view or and also do you see any intrusive activity that might point you towards, the source of everything.
We certainly believe there's potential. You know, we have tried and will continue to drive. We have his own that's called WH41 and WH41 extension. It's a bit smaller, but it does show that there's other mineralization parallel to Woolshagen Ojikoto. And sorry, Mike, what was your second question?
Any evidence of an intrusion that might be driving the system and getting a bit closer to the source?
Well, not rate on property, there are intrusions in the area that have the same age as Otjikoto and certainly the sulfide Oxide zoneation that you see suggests there's an intrusion to us off of it.
Okay. If that's all we have, for the Otjikoto Panel. We're going to move on. I just wanted to point out though, you've heard a gentleman named John answer a couple of questions That's John Rahala, b 2 gold's VP of metallurgy. So now we'll call up, Thomas Lee, who is the corporate affairs manager for Nicaragua.
Thank you, Ian. Good afternoon. B2Gold acquired La Libertad and El Limon mines in 2009. So, we're coming up now in a full decade of successful and responsible mining operations in Nicaragua. The original investment for both mines $53,000,000.
And since then, we have now exported well more than 1 and a half $1,000,000,000 in gold. So our mines in Nicaragua have paid for themselves, many times over and have been very significant 2 B2Gold. However, B2Gold has also been very significant to Nicaragua, and that's what I'd like to focus on in presentation, our importance to Nicaragua and in particular to our workers and to our communities. And then we'll ask Craig to come up and talk about the operations and why B2Gold will continue to be important to Nicaragua and Nicaragua to be too for the next decade. As you see on the map, Nicaragua is, an easily accessible country.
It's a very quick flight down from Canada or the United States. Libertad mine is due east of the capital city of managua, about 170 kilometers. El Limon is about 120 kilometers to the northwest the the highways and roads in Nicaragua are very good. So, it's a very easy ride or drive out to both mines. Mining in Nicaragua goes far back before, B2Gold's operations.
In fact, both areas of La Libertad and El Limon have seen mining for 100 years. And industrial gold mining for, over 70 years now. So Nicaragua is a mining country. Our communities our gold mining communities. And many of our employees come from, mining families that date back for generations.
One of those, in fact, is our country manager Olmar Vega, whose grandfather worked as a minor well in Nicaragua. I should mention that in addition to our, country manager, the general managers at both Libertad and Limon mines are also Nicaragua. And, in fact, most of our top managers in Nicaragua are Nicaragua. And that means quite a bit too employees and the country itself. It's been one of the major factors behind our good reputation.
And B2Gold has developed a very strong, a very solid reputation in Nicaragua. We're recognized for our commitment to the health and the of our of our employees, for our environmental stewardship and for our respect for and investment in our communities. B2Gold has really been a pioneer in Nicaragua in terms of setting very high standards and not only in the mining industry, but in all, sectors of the economy. And B2Gold is very important to the Nicaragua economy, and that we can clearly see in these two graphs, the first graph shows the value of beat of gold exports in recent years and B2Gold's contribution. To those exports.
And here we can clearly see the importance of B2Gold's arrival and the restart up of, the dead mine in 2010. Gold is consistently one of the top 3 exports from the country. And on average, B2Gold produces over 60% of that gold. So, B2Gold is not only the largest exporter of gold from Nicaragua, but in terms of export value, we are the largest export company of any product, any product from Nicaragua. The gold mining industry clearly and B2Gold in particular as the major player in industry are of strategic interest then to the Nicaragua economy.
We bring in, direct foreign investment, hard currency We, provide significant national and municipal level, tax revenue, and we provide safe, stable, and well paying jobs. And we'll take a look at those jobs. B2Gold employees over 2600 direct and contract workers. This is a very significant number in a a population of just over 6,000,000 people. As in our other operations in Nicaragua, we also focus on local hiring fewer than 1% of our direct employees are expats.
As I mentioned before, most of our senior manager in Nicaragua are Nicaragua. And at the mines, over 90% of our employees are from the communities directly around the mine sites. And because so many of our employees are low I believe they recognize the the, not only the benefits that Dietragul brings to them and their family but also the benefits to their communities. A study in 2006 showed that salaries in the mining sector are among the very, best salaries in Nicaragua. And that led to the headline that you see on the screen there, from one of Nicaragua's major newspapers, which reads, mining families with greater well-being Employment generation has been key to the social development of several municipalities.
According to another study, in January of this year, which we see in the graph on on the right, the municipality of La Libertad was number 1 in the country in terms of tax revenue per capita over the prior 5 years, and that is a direct result of Vitugol's presence in that municipality. And, Santo Lomingo, which is the municipality right next to Lali at and where, our mining operations are also the major, source of tax revenues. That municipality was number 3 the country in terms of tax revenue. So the impact is quite clear. This is, you know, a positive, intangible sign of our impact in the community where we're we're bringing in, better roads and highways where we're we're we're bringing in better schools, resulting in better, livelihoods and and better opportunities in general for the And tax revenues are just one part of our positive impact.
We also invest directly in our communities. Year after year, we're recognized, on a national level for our responsible mining for our achievements in CSR and our social investment, which focuses on education, health, the environment and livelihoods. The slide just shows one specific example. This was a, project where we helped to create alternative and sustainable livelihoods in a sector that's completely independent of the mining industry. In 2013, we recognize the importance and the potential of dairy farming in the municipalities of La Libertad and Santa Lamingo.
However, we also saw that the area, the whole region lacked the infrastructure and the facilities to be able to store the milk being produced by local local dairy farmers in a safe and Safeway and with a quality that is required, to be able then sell that milk to the national dairy industry. So we financed the construction and the equipping of a dairy chilling center. We also provided training to, local dairy farmers, small farmers and, put them in contact as well with representative from the National Dairy Industry. The chilling center is doing remarkably well. That's been very since initiating operations in early 2014, it has sold over 8.5 1,000,000 liters of of milk, and this at higher prices and stabler prices throughout the year, So through this one project, we've, improved the lives of many local farmers and their families increasing their incomes and our opportunities.
We have stimulated the local economy and helped to generate employment. And all this strengthening an existing traditional and sustainable livelihood, again, in an industry that's completely, independent of mining. This is just one example again of what is now a decade of social investment in Nicaragua. B2L has implemented over 100 social investment projects, and invested over 30 $1,000,000, since 2009. That's about $10,000,000 in each of the communities in which we operate Leather at Santo Domingo and El Limon.
And this is something that we can all be very proud about. 1 of the, one of the, factors in our successful and responsible binding over the past decade. And with that, I'll say thank you, and I'll ask Dale to come up talk about our operations and our next 10 years in Nicaragua.
Thank you, Thomas and welcome all. With almost a decade of experience in Nicaragua, we know the country well. And we want to say we're comfortable operating there too. In addition to Thomas, we have 2 other senior management staff here in Toronto, Tenemos Dosarentes, Akhil, Ivoi presentalis. That's my heads up to our Spanish speakers.
First of all, Omar, Vega, our country manager, Nicaragua, mining engineer, he's been with B2Gold and formerly central Sun for a number of years, manager at El Limon, then Bismonique eventually, and he moved up to Tree manager a number of years ago. We also have new here, Jorge Marin, new to Toronto, not new to us, Jorge started with the operations way back in in Costa Rica. And moved to Triton, the same year that I arrived on the scene 2008 as maintenance manager. He's electrical engineer with a master's in maintenance. From maintenance manager in La Libertad or in El Limon, I convinced him to move to let Libertad.
I was my manager there at the time. And since then, he's ruined his role, eventually becoming my manager in La Libertad. And recently, we moved Dom up to a more senior role in which he is able to share his expertise across both operations. So, he's operations manager in Nicaragua. And, not only will he share his expertise, but he'll provide us support as we to a potential plant expansion at El Limon.
So, congratulations. So, at the outset, I'd like to comment, Nicole Clive's comments about the work for our management in Nicaragua through this past year. It's been an unusual and a very challenging year for us And the staff there has done an extremely good job in ensuring are doing their best to ensure continuous operations in Nicaragua as we've dealt with social and political issues. Our workforce stands by us as well. Both in Limon in La Libertad, our workforce tells us they want stability, they want peace, and they want to work.
Our communities, La Libertad and Neli 1, likewise, stand with us. They recognize that they have a history of mining. Mining us forms a significant part of the economy in the local areas and their future lives with mining as well. I'm glad to see the button goes back also. So, in La Libertad, we have more than 1500 employees and that's a combination of direct employees and contractor Our direct employees manage the mine services operations and operate the process plant.
Our contractors work for our mine surface contractor and are responsible for earthmoving operations. It's a unionized operation. We have a history of excellent labor relations. We have never lost today in almost 10 years to a labor dispute. And we're recognized and awarded in Nicaragua for our leadership in industrial safety.
So way back in 2009, we took over recognized the potential of the La Libertech concession. Well mineralized. And with the addition of a conventional processing plant, we could increase the recovery and look towards a successful mine. And since the start of the operation of that process plant in 2010, we've produced more than 960,000 ounces Really wants to run away on me. So in the center of the screen, I recall a question I feel question in the second quarter about our production forecast for the year.
And at that time, we recognized the potential for heavily antenna moving back as we saw a delay in our permit for heavily antenna. And at that time, we thought that we could drive our other pits faster, eliminate or reduce the component of Spentor and still achieve guidance for the year by 3rd quarter We recognize the impact of the social disruption on our production, our productivity and our scheduling of pit And with that, we regarded to between 90,951,000 ounces. So, at the bottom of the screen, we see the impact on our cash operating cost increasing. What isn't shown on the graph or the efforts on the cost control side that have been done by the staff at La Libertad. Mining costs have been reduced a whopping 25% and our processing costs have tracks as forecast, but we get there a little different way less gold produced but offset by reduced investment in heavily antenna development.
Expiration continues in the Libertad with a budget of about $5,000,000 this year. And our proven and, our proven reserves and our resources total right now 290,000 ounces and that's the biggest single challenge ahead of La Libertad in its future. And perhaps, Thomas will have some comments about that for us. Okay. This is a synopsis for 2018 showing our guidance 90 to 100,000 ounces.
To shortcut one question, 1st quarter 92.2 percent related to lower grade and some carbon issues. Plants running very well. We're averaging over 94.5% recovery in these recent months. And this shows pretty well throughput at 2,200,000 tons per year, just over that. Grade as a result of the changes forced in our pit sequences is low at 1.3 against budget of 1.67.
So, looking forward to 2019, my first note is that 125,000 to 135,000 ounces is the guidance that comes from our life of mine. We're currently working the budget scenarios we do not anticipate to achieve that life of mine guidance. We instead state that our guidance will be in the range of 105 to 115,000 ounces for the year. Throughput remains unchanged 2,200,000 tons per year and we will be operating from 5 material sources throughout the year. That includes San Diego pit, which will finish off midway through the year.
San Juan heavily underground, Spintour and Spintour will average about 0.7 grams per ton for those of you unfamiliar with the operation. That's a remnant of a prior heap leach operation and we use it to complement our mill feed from other sources. And finally, midway through the year, we're anticipating that Jabali Antenna will come on stream. So, we continue to invest carefully in La Libertad and judiciously, this year, we'll do a raise on our tailings structure That will provide capacity for just over 2 years. But we point out here that given our resource and resource and reserve statement, if we use that material only, we will exhaust that supply early in 2020.
Other capital expenditures for the year include the watering and ventilation for heavily underground and development for heavily antenna pit would be land and development costs. So, I wanted to talk a bit about operations and I also wanted to talk briefly about the social disruption that we experienced Nicaragua, the problems that occurred and how we resolve those issues as well. The first three bullets really speak to supply chain interruption, both and most particularly on diesel, but other consumables as well such lime that require a constant flow to the mine. Customs shut down and that impeded importation of our spare parts for our mobile fleet and that impeded the McKenna availability in turn generating a downstream effect on our maintenance, which affected our mechanical availability throughout the the remaining 3 quarters of the year. Manning issues, again, related to block hates that were that were posted throughout the country, impeded movement for our mine contractor as well.
Access to San Antonio Domingo Township was impeded as a consequence, the underground mine flooded And since the lifting of the blockades, we've been focused on dewatering and now rehabilitating on mine. We anticipate the rehabilitation will be complete in early December. And we're anticipating development and production in the final month of this year. Other delay with the impediment of accessing Santa Domingo, we were unable to continue our dialogue with the miners who are part of the relocation package that is at Jabali Antenna. So, that fell by the wayside.
And clearly, Marina was focused, which is the Ministry of Environment was focused on other political issues through that period as well. So that activity got deferred. We recently re initiated our dialogue with the small minors. And that's advancing very well. We've garnered support of the town and they will declare their support.
The local municipality will declare their support for the project of Jabali Antenna, and we've had good indications in our recent conversations with Marina that they will support going to a public consult once we demonstrate significant conclusion of the relocation agreements with the small miners. So, lifting of the blockade obviously solved our supply issue, but there were some downstream effects, of course, by the related to that. Maintenance issues and mechanical availability issues that sprung from that were addressed with our contractor by adding to his fleet and improving the supply chain and warehousing of spare parts. And as I said, we've reinitiated communication with Santa Domingo, and we look to move forward with the permitting of Jabali Antenna. And finally, as I indicated, we've resolved the issues of water control in Jabali Underground And we're looking forward to producing there shortly and it forms part of our 2009 production portfolio.
Lead me on mine, now this is a really interesting story.
This is
a mine that since 1941 has existed on 2 to 3 years of reserves and it wasn't until the announcement of Vermont Central that we had a good healthy long life ahead of this operation. And really out of that, we gained the opportunity to justify some investments and some optimization of the process plant in Havelis. So, this really affords us an opportunity to improve performance in El Limon and enjoy the benefits of a longer mine life. I probably called it heavily, didn't I? Thanks.
Okay. Just over 1100 employees unionized, direct employees operate the underground mine and run the process plant. Our contractors similar to La Libertad are responsible for earthmoving unionized operation. Similar in, in case in El Limon, we had some challenges in 2018. I'll talk about those in a minute.
That resulted in a change of guidance in the 3rd quarter to 50,000 to 55,000 ounces and we can see the impact in the cash operating costs increasing. And, likewise, the all in sustaining cost increasing with the smaller divisor for gold. In addition to that, of course, we started looking for this capital and applying additional capital looking to develop Limon Central. So land purchase development of infrastructure and development of the pit area in in El Limon. This has been a good project for us and for exploration.
We currently carry reserve and resource 490,000 is that, of course, is increasing. And with the model update, we'll see those numbers improve. 2018 completion, we see the effects of impediment of about 33 days in our operations resulting from the barricades. So 449,000 tons processed. And typically, we would expect $500,000 for the year.
So, without those impediments, we clearly would have been on track to complete the year at or ahead of budget. 3.6 grams. We see there a range of 3.5 to 4 grams to year by year. And again, our guidance 50,000 to 55,000 ounces. Looking into 2019, again, this is the guidance from the life of mine.
We expect our production in 2019 as we bring Limon Central into production to come just under that 60,000 ounce mark. Throughput will remain at 500,000 tons per year. And in the first quarter of this year, we'll finalize our optimization study and look at scenarios that can increase that plant capacity. We've looked at a number of scenarios. The most attractive one that we see right now is 100,000 tons per year.
Sourcing for ore at El Limon will include the remains of the Mercedes pit that will finish early in 2019. And by the second quarter, we'll be bringing Limon Central on stream. All our operations there, all our pits are permitted and the other activity that we'll see through 2019 is the development of Vetha Nueva anticipating that production will come in 20 from that operation. So we do have a high strip ratio next year as we break open the Limon Central Pit 10,500,000 tons that commences with phase 1 through to the midyear. And that provides a good source of or beyond that, we move to phase 2 for the remainder of the year.
Our tailings expansion was completed last year, so no major investment there. And the major capital expense, of course, will be on the, on the pre stripping We also have in place a $2,000,000 program to improve some of the processes in our process plant Bill referred to that briefly. Those have initiated now, and they'll continue through the second quarter of next year. So, 2018, again, some of the same or similar issues that we and the second was at the national level. So, the one at the local level actually paralyzed our operation for 33 days.
At the national level that eventually was disbanded through the third quarter of the year. That affected our ability to plan and develop as we intended. In addition, stoppage the issuance of explosive permits caused us to focus on production only rather than development in our underground operation. We're through that. And as of last month, we're basically on track and on budget, as we would expect.
And we plan on fulfilling our commitment of 50,000 to 55,000 ounces. For Jabali for Limon Central, One of the challenges in the year was that with the social disturbance, the process of pit permit was delayed. Now, two reasons for that. 1, we're not going to hold a public consultation in the middle of a, of a social conflict So for that reason was delayed. And of course, Moreno was focused on other issues.
We do have that permit at hand. It was delivered in October of this year. So, I don't know if there are any social scientists here. I have a really interesting story about how we resolve the issue of the local roadblocks. After our meet, I'm happy to go over that with anybody.
It's quite an interesting story, how we involve shareholders and empowered the community to help us resolve this issue. Roadblocks at the national level resolve themselves eventually through July. And I would say, and it did impact our costs that we continue to support our workers through that 33 days of production interruption. That had a positive side effect though it created a very positive work ambient in the operation. And in that atmosphere, able to complete negotiations of our collective agreement, which extends out to 2020.
As we waited for our permit for Limon Central, we fast tracked some of development for dump areas and those delays. So here quickly is a summary of where we got to with the improvements in the future. Of El Limon in the upper in the upper row is Limon Central. Now, numbers slightly different in our press release, 512,000 ounces. But really, what we see here is the extension of our production out another 10 years and the opportunity to optimize our facilities.
Below that, we've completed a study for reprocessing historic tailings. Now, mines historically in this area, Televeta, we're producing at 14 or 15 grams per tonne. So their leftovers are certainly adequate for us to process 7,300,000 tons, 1.12 grams per tonne This would be processed at the end of our operating life at a rate of about 18,000 ounces per year. So out of that, we look at 2 of those and we've extended our operations out 1 more generation. In El Limon.
Just quickly, the yellow line outlines the Limon Central area and the blue line inside the large yellow circle, basically delineates our phase 1 and phase 2 operations to the northeast, our existing tailings facility, and to the east are our future dump areas Now, when we understood the impact of Limon Central, we went out and proactively secured land for dump area. We also secured land for an additional tailings pond. So, we're well organized in our future purchases for land and those are already in place. For that blue circle, if you look at the lower left corner, you can see the line makes a jog. That law, that jog cuts directly through our raw stockpile.
So, we could not have found anything closer to our process facilities to process. It's a great game changer for us at Limon. And no drilling closer to the crusher, please, Tom, Just off-site, on this, on this plan view to the northeast of Santa Pancha, to the Southwest, Venezuela, and directly to the south would be the location of our future tailings point. So, we talked about 2019 and looking through the results of our study. This graphic shows the scenario for 600,000 tons per year.
Fine grind. One of the things that we observe when we look at the metallurgy for the month central recovery is a little lower by grinding to 35 microns We improved our grind and we can get these back up into the 91% to 94% level where we're accustomed. That includes revamping our crusher adding a pebble crusher, adding cyclone pack, adding a vertical mill and adding a pre leach thickener in this scenario As I said, we've run through a number of scenarios. This is the 600,000 ton. This one would involve an investment of $35,000,000, about 16 to implement and we're looking to finalize the study and then make the decision.
So, that's it for the update for Nicaragua, and I would call on Tom Gerrigan.
Thanks, Dale. Just a map in Nicaragua showing, Libertad and Limon. I'm sure you all are aware, have you seen this map already? I just wanted to put this map up. This is the, the location of, the central discovery and it just goes to prove the old adage.
The best place to find a mine is between the 2 tailings deposits and the next to the mill. Is not, you know, not something I recommend for the future. It's certainly not something we teach young geologists. So this, long section, I wanted to show this and talk about it a little bit more. This is the long section through, central and the extensions of central to the north.
And you can see when you look at this long section, the red lines of $1400 pit. When you look at the drilling that we've done this year, within this area, you can see there are several holes near the bottom of the pit or well below the proposed pits with really good grades. You know, you look below Tigra Chaparral, you've got six meters of 16 grams. You, you know, you look to the north, you've got 14, almost fourteen meters of six point 7 grams, three meters of 35 grams. What this is meant to show is, the resources that we've shown so far within a pit that Ell Limon Central, or, in my view, a starting point for this, this project, it looks like it's got pretty good legs for a future underground mine.
And certainly exploration drilling that we've done to the north has picked up some more mineralization. So, I think the current resources, for central, will grow. Not under the mill, though. It does dip away from the mill just so you're aware. So we'll look at the just a slide for Libertad.
You know, as Dale says, we're we're down to, you know, not a lot of time left in our current resources and reserves for Libertad. However, we've been fairly successful with exploration this year. You look at the bottom left hand side of this this map, you can see several areas, you know, Rosario, Cosmetillo, San Antonio, have all had significantly good intersections, over good widths, things that we think are going to be open pitiable. We don't know the size of them yet. But they are, you know, of the grade and widths that, can support an open pit.
You know, expiration is going to continue on these, next year, but I'm pretty sure that Dale and I will be talking in the next 3 or 4 months about, possibly getting some of these permanent mine in, into the mine plan. So there is potential to still extend the, current mine life of Libertad. We haven't made a, another major discovery as the size of a heavily antenna, but something like Rosario and west of Rosario does have that potential. So with that, that's just a short summary of exploration for Nicaragua. Thank you very much and we'll open up, I guess, for questions on Nicaragua.
Thanks, Tom. Are there any questions on for the Nicaragua panel? Okay. Well, moving on. And as I said, we're, well ahead of schedule.
I just wanted to point out to the people on the webcast if you have a question, there's there's many people on the webcast. If they have questions, please contact me, in the Investor Day section of our site. My contact information is there. And I'm going to now pass it over back to Clive Johnson for some closing remarks.
Thanks Ian and thanks everyone. I'd like to thank all the guys for the great presentations. And I also wanted to recognize a few other people and then maybe I'll make a few remarks about just summarizing on what we've talked about a little bit and looking forward. Wanna introduce you to Dana Rogers. Where's Dana?
Dana's just recently been promoted to the vice president of finance, the B2Gold. She Phyllis for over 4 years and her, previous title, she was the group financial controller. So, we'll welcome Dana, her to have her in this new position. I'd also like to introduce to Robin Wiseman. Where's Robin?
Is Robin over there? You know, Robin has just recently joined us, so most recent addition as a director of the company. We go way back with Robin Robin had a very successful long career, the IFC, was responsible for, helping to finance mines around the world, including the Julieta mine and the Bima built in a Far East 1990, 899. Ron was very instrumental in helping us getting that financed and also the Koopa mine in Russia, if that's how long ago met Robin and we've, we were thrilled to have her as she took retirement from the FC to agree to join our board with a tremendous experience and she's a great addition to the board. I'll remind you that in 1998, 99, when we built the trailer mine gold was 2.60 an ounce, not 12.60.
Announced. It was quite a challenge. So, thanks, Robin, and welcome. I also want to get Roger Rishay to stand up. Roger?
Rogers, our in house counsel and, policy walk and, vice presidents a long time, colleague of mine. I see Roger and Tom and I go back to the early '80s in the Yukon. Is thinking I must have been 13. I was actually 16. Roger was 20, I think.
But, we go way back, to, for a long time. And, Raj has been with me and with Rogers and Tom and I and others for many adventures all around the world. And, He's our, policy expert. So if you have questions over, also why don't you, Roger would love to answer your policy questions. Postal, Neil Reeder.
Where's Neil? There's Neil in the right. Neil, some of you probably heard from Neil or or or about Neil. Neil has, recently joined us a couple of years ago as the vice president of government affairs. Neil, we go with Neil as well.
Neil worked for as a Canadian ambassador in many countries around the world. And, we, in fact, he was the ambassador in Nicaragua when we first went to Nicaragua. We went to the Philippines and guess who was the ambassador and the ambassador of the Philippines was Neil. So I asked him if he was following us around the world or if we are following him. But he, retired, and I was thrilled to, to have Neil agreed to join us.
He's been an excellent to data from his contacts, not just with Canadian ambassadors, but other ambassadors and always countries around the world. So when he are dealing with political risk as we are, It's wonderful to have Neil, there and give us some great input. And he's a great diplomat and he's making me a bit more of a over time. Just to wrap it all up, I guess at the end of the day, I'm pretty sure it's come across with a remarkably experienced team we have. I mentioned the 250 years before.
But, so listening to all of us today, I'm extremely proud of what we've been able to accomplish and all of you should be as well. Maybe it's been quite remarkable. And it's not, as I said earlier, not just what we've done. It's the way you on. Making people first.
We're very proud of that. Years ago, it was Bill Lytle who came up with the expression that this is not your grandfather's mining company. And it's clearly not. It's a lot better than that. So one thing I realize we didn't really mention or didn't highlight was a mine life.
These pro 6. So, with Fekola, even in expanded form, it's going to be 10 years. We expect plus, as Banyami has 8 year Mine Lake at around 200,000 ounces a year in Hartebrok, Mayankham then another 9 years of mining tailings. So, sorry, low grade stockpiles, which would mean another 9 years at about 100,000 ounces a year. Now, this borrowing any expiration success, we might see the 8 increase as well.
One moment. Though, Jacobau, we have a 9 year mile life there as well, and there's, as Tom pointed out, it's open. Potentially expansion and going underground as well in the future. So, solid mine life since Limon is smaller, but Limon, as you just heard, has a new a 10 year my life, the Libertad remains one of our one of our minds that's sort of life challenged at the moment, but hopefully we'll see expedition success there. Looking forward, we're going to continue to do, as I said earlier, what we've done very well, to grow and focus growth organically while always keeping eye for opportunities that make sense to add to our portfolio or things that we can work on and build I'm pretty excited about the potential.
It's early and there's more work to be done, but what we're seeing and hearing about the potential of Gramalote. Becoming potentially a good project for AngloGold Ashanti and ourselves. Obviously, one of the things we aspire to and features continue, of course, to be a growth company, but also be a growth company that pays a dividend. It's really one of our goals. And I think that can be done.
And that's something we will aspire to and continue to aspire to. I'm not you're not going to see it next year unless gold makes a dramatic move. But I think over the next 2 or 3 years, that's where we'd like to see ourselves taking some of the hard earned cash flow and using some of it for for expanding mines, building mines, but also using some of it as a way to reward our shareholders and give back by way of a dividend we're not going to pay some marginal dividend just because so we see that we are paying a dividend, we won't do that. But when we can pay a reasonable dividend, still a lot of the ability to keep growing this company. We'll be looking hard at that.
So with that, I'll wrap it up and thank you all very much. You can probably tell we're pretty excited about where we sit in the world. Obviously, it's been a really tough time and now they're really tough year for the sector. But we refuse to be victims even though the market struggles to reflect the value of what we built. At the end of the day, we understand it's not because of what we've done.
It's sadly because of the feeling of others. They know that they are really hope this industry gets us act together and continues to improve. Well, we don't think satisfaction any satisfaction in the feeling of others but we do believe in accountability. And if half the gold companies had performance as well as us, the market wouldn't be treating us the way the market today. But at the end of the day, value will be rewarded.
We firmly believe that. And we've taken to telling ourselves recently that flat as the new up for gold equities. But I'm still confident that the market is going to reflect the value of what we've built, but also the value of what we bring in the very near term. When you look at exciting things like Fekola expansion and potential on all the various exciting projects we have, that we're working on. So, thank you very much for your time.
Across the Hall here, we're going to have beverages served. If you'd like everybody to answer that on the webcast, head to your fridge, grab a beverage, and thank you very much for joining us. Cheers.
So, yeah, as
Clive said, We are ahead of schedule, but, we've, accelerated the cocktail reception time. So It's just across the hall again in the refreshment section. And please join us. And everybody from our staff will be around if you able to ask a question or had something you wanted to elaborate on. We look forward to that.
So thank you very much for coming, and thank you everyone on the webcast. For participating in, our Investor Day today.
So, see, thanks to Ian for a great job and the other people who organized this. Thank you very much.