Good day. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Kinross Gold Corporation S econd Quarter 2021 Results Conference Call and Webcast. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Chris Lichtenheldt, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. With us today, we have Paul Rollinson, President and CEO, and the Kinross senior leadership team, Andrea Freeborough, Paul Tomory, and Geoff Gold. Before we begin, I would like to bring your attention to the fact that we will be making forward-looking statements during this presentation. For a complete discussion of the risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that may lead to actual results and performance being different from estimates made in our forward-looking information, please refer to page two of this presentation, our news release dated July 20, 2021, the MD&A for the period ended June 30, 2021, and our most recent 10-K, all of which are available on our website. I will now turn the call over to Paul.
Thanks, Chris. Thank you all for joining us today. While there continues to be challenges globally coming out of the pandemic, we are seeing signs of a return to normal across our operations. With the safety and wellbeing of our people as our top priority, we are maintaining our pandemic-related protocols where needed. We are also benefiting from a continued return to more efficient operating practices wherever possible. With travel restrictions easing, we have been able to reach most of our sites more easily. Before turning the call over to Andrea for a financial review and Paul for an operating review, I will comment briefly on the situation at Tasiast, our return of capital plan, and some highlights from the quarter. We realize the fire at Tasiast created a lot of uncertainty, which negatively impacted our stock price.
Our objective today is to provide an update that helps remove this uncertainty. We needed the past several weeks to make mechanical inspections, and based on this, we do not believe there is any substantial damage to the integrity of the mill. As a result, we are confident that we will be operational before year-end. Furthermore, our updated estimate for the cost of repair is now reduced to not more than $35 million. Importantly, the gold is still in the ground, and we have an insurance claim for the damages and the interruption to our business. Therefore, we do not see a fundamental change in the value of our business. With respect to the 24K expansion, while the plant is down, we have been able to continue to mine and advance the project.
We will begin 2022 with substantially more ore in stockpile, which further secures our ability to meet our production goals in 2022 and 2023, and now 2024. I was recently in Mauritania, and we visited Tasiast and met with senior government officials. On July 15th, we signed the final agreement, which provides enhanced certainty on the economics at Tasiast. Achieving this important milestone reinforces our strong partnership with the government. We are appreciative of the strong support from the government, particularly as we work through the impact of the mill fire. We have a high degree of confidence in our strong production growth and increasing free cash flow over the next few years.
In addition, the fact that we see no fundamental change in the value of the business, coupled with our recent stock price performance, makes now a highly compelling time to begin the share buyback program that we announced last night. We see the buyback as a meaningful addition to our regular dividend as we are targeting to double the total cash we are allocating to returns over the next 12 months. Moving on to the broader portfolio, we are confident in our ability to meet our revised 2021 production guidance and our outlook to 2023, which sees us growing production to 2.9 million ounces. With respect to the cost guidance, the setbacks we faced this year at Tasiast and Round Mountain on their own would not have taken us out of our original guidance range.
Combining these setbacks with higher gold prices and inflation has created a need to update our outlook on costs for the year. Importantly, though, our margins remain strong and ahead of our original budget expectations. Andrea will provide more detail on our guidance update in a few moments. I would like to highlight two other important recent developments. One, we completed a scoping study at Manh Choh, which confirms the value of the project. Two, we published our 2020 sustainability report, which outlines our strong performance and targets in areas of safety and sustainability, environment, social, and governance. Along with this, we also released our first climate report, which outlines our climate strategy. Notwithstanding our strong record on safety, which is our first priority, we were recently reminded that our work in this area is never done.
I'm saddened to report that in June, we experienced a fatality at our Chirano mine in Ghana. The loss of one of our employees reinforces the need to continue focusing our efforts on enhancing safety and risk management systems across our global operations. I will now turn the call over to Andrea for a more detailed review of our financial results.
Thanks, Paul. I'll begin with financial highlights from the quarter, including highlights on our balance sheet, then provide some commentary on our updated outlook. Production during the quarter was approximately 538,000 ounces, and sales were 548,000 ounces. We generated free cash flow of $183 million during the quarter, which was an increase over $100 million from the previous quarter, due largely to lower taxes paid. Cost of sales were $830 per ounce in Q2, which was up from the previous quarter and Q2 of last year due to lower production, higher operating waste mined at a number of our sites as expected, and some inflationary pressures that we're starting to see. Attributable operating margins were robust again in Q2 at 54%, driven largely by strong gold prices.
All-in sustaining costs of $1,069 per ounce were up compared to the previous quarter and Q2 of last year, primarily due to lower ounces sold and higher cost of sales. Our adjusted net earnings of $157 million and adjusted operating cash flow of $364 million were down approximately 19% and 13% respectively from the same quarter last year, also a result of the decrease in production and higher cost of sales. Moving to our balance sheet, our cash position remains strong, and we finished the quarter with $676 million of cash after repaying $500 million of senior notes in June. We now have $1.25 billion of senior notes remaining, with the next maturity date in March of 2024. Our net debt at the end of the quarter improved to approximately $780 million. Our trailing 12-month net debt to EBITDA ratio improved slightly and is now just under 0.4x .
Our investment-grade credit profile from the three major rating agencies has been further enhanced this year, with Moody's moving us to a positive outlook in Q1, followed by an upgrade from Fitch in Q2. In July, we extended the maturity date of our revolving credit facility to July 2026, returning to a five-year term. Looking ahead to the remainder of the year, as Paul mentioned, we're pleased to have put in place a share buyback program. We expect to begin executing this program in the near future, and based on where we sit today, we would expect to double our return of capital over the next 12 months through this program. In summary, our cash flow remains strong, and our balance sheet continues to strengthen. We're well-positioned to fund our growth over the next few years while continuing to reduce our debt and increase our return of capital to shareholders.
Turning to our updated outlook for 2021, I note that all figures I'll reference here are within our typical confidence range of ± 5%. Starting with cost of sales, we've increased our 2021 guidance from $790-$830 per ounce. The increase is mainly due to the deferral of low-cost ounces from Tasiast and higher gold prices resulting in higher royalty payments, as well as emerging trends in inflation. We have also increased guidance for all-in sustaining costs from $1,025-$1,110 per ounce. This increase is the result of the higher cost of sales and the impact of sustaining CapEx overhead and other sustaining costs over fewer ounces of production resulting from the Tasiast fire. Our guidance for other operating expense is increasing from $150 million-$285 million. The increase is due to three factors.
The Tasiast mill repairs are estimated to be up to $35 million. A portion of this may end up being classified within CapEx, but for now, we've made the allowance within other operating costs. Approximately $50 million of non-mining related operating costs incurred at Tasiast during the repair of the mill, including site G&A. Approximately $50 million of costs related to the wall remediation effort at Round Mountain. As a reminder, we will be pursuing the recovery of the Tasiast-related costs as we work through the insurance process. For capital expenditures, we are maintaining our full-year guidance of $900 million. Looking out beyond this year, as Paul mentioned, we're confident in our production outlook of 2.7 and 2.9 million ounces for 2022 and 2023 respectively.
With respect to cost, we'd like to provide some context on what we're seeing. At the time of our Q4 release, we had indicated that we expect cost of sales in 2022 to decline and to be largely in line with 2020. Our business remains on track to benefit from higher production, which will favorably influence our per ounce cost metrics, and we'll continue to monitor inflationary pressures. Some of these inflationary pressures may be temporary, and others may not be. As we approach the end of this year and complete our strategic business planning and advance our budget process for 2022, we will be able to provide more details. I'll now turn the call over to Paul Tomory.
Thank you, Andrea. I will provide a brief update on the impacts from COVID, followed by an update on our operations, projects, and exploration programs. As Paul mentioned, COVID restrictions are generally lifting around the world, and most of our operations are slowly returning to normal, with some exceptions. Thanks to our employees, operating communities, and host governments, and our operations have performed very well throughout this pandemic. I'll begin by providing an update on the Tasiast mill repairs. Most importantly, over the last few days, the mill has been turned, and we are now confident that the gearless motor drive, the trunnion bearings, and the mill shell are in good shape. To note, we've included a link to a video of the mill restart test in our press release. Based on this, we are confident that the mill will restart in the fourth quarter.
A new trommel screen has been ordered, and the anticipated delivery dates support the planned mill restart timeline. Following installation of the trommel screen, we expect to be able to resume operations at full capacity essentially right away without a significant ramp-up period. We remain confident in our ability to meet 2022 production targets as the high-grade stockpiles that we will build will be available at startup. The 21K project is now 90% complete. Commissioning activities of the power plant have begun, and we expect it to be operational in the late part of Q4, and we expect to reach 21,000 tons per day in the first quarter of 2022. Additionally, we are exploring ways to potentially shorten the time needed to reach 24,000 tons per day by taking advantage of mill downtime to advance some of the project tie-ins sooner.
Moving to Brazil, Paracatu had a good first half overall. The mine produced 151,000 ounces, an increase of 24,000 ounces over Q1, due primarily to the timing of ounces processed through the mill. Higher cash costs compared with Q1 are attributed principally to an isolated incident of unplanned maintenance, inflationary pressures, particularly on consumables, labor, and diesel, and higher power costs due to drought and the government's response restricting hydropower generation, which has resulted in increased exposure to more expensive spot power purchases. On this issue, it's worth noting that while drought conditions are prevalent and affecting power generation, it is not impacting water balance at Paracatu. In Russia, Kupol delivered another good quarter. Results were largely in line with Q1 as the transition to narrow vein mining continues to progress as planned.
We saw lower grades compared to the previous quarter in Q2 of last year due to planned mine sequencing at Kupol, combined with lower-grade stockpiles from Dvoinoe. We expect grades to stay around these levels for the remainder of the year. Turning to Nevada, at Round Mountain, implementation of the revised mine plan is proceeding well, and Q2 production was in line with our expectations. The relocation of the waste pile at the top of the pit continued during the quarter and should be completed next month. Fortunately, this historic waste pile proved to be mineralized, covering the cost of the rehandling. Mitigation efforts have stabilized the wall, and significant progress has been made on further dewatering. The overall optimization study, including opportunities for the Phase S pushback, is progressing well and on schedule to be completed early next year.
Production was lower quarter-over-quarter as a result of our focus on mitigating the wall instability, while costs were largely in line. Turning to our other operations, Fort Knox performed well during the second quarter as production increased compared to Q1 due to an increase in ounces recovered from the new Barnes Creek heap leach. Cash costs remained high due to higher operating waste mined, but decreased year-over-year due to more ounces produced from the new heap leach. Bald Mountain's production was lower compared to the previous quarter due to the timing of ounces recovered from the heap as we mined through some carbonaceous material in the Vantage pit at the beginning of the quarter. We expect stronger production in the second half. Higher cash costs compared to the previous quarter were due to lower production and higher fuel costs.
Chirano has also delivered a good performance so far this year. Production was slightly lower than in Q1, mainly due to lower grades from the underground mine, but is largely in line year-over-year, and the mine continues to generate positive cash flow. Moving on to our projects, as Paul mentioned, the Manh Choh scoping study was completed this quarter on schedule. The results confirm the project is low risk, low cost, high grade, high return addition to our Fort Knox mine. Many of the key metrics in the study remain comparable to our views at the time of the acquisition, including grades, recoveries, life of mine production of approximately 1 million ounces, with first production expected in 2024. Capital cost estimates, however, have increased by approximately $50 million to approximately $150 million on a 100% basis.
The increase is largely due to strategic decisions that are expected to de-risk the project and improve operational efficiencies, including reducing the use of contractors. In addition, a better understanding of the project site conditions, particularly topography and environment, contributed to this increased capital. The project is moving to an FS, and we expect to report those results by the end of 2022. Our other projects are advancing well. Development work on the Gil satellite pits, located approximately 15 km east of Fort Knox, is proceeding as planned, and is on track for first production later this year. La Coipa remains on budget and on track for first production in mid 2022, with fleet refurbishments now complete. Pre-stripping, plant refurbishment, and mine road construction are also progressing very well. The Lobo-Marte FS is on schedule for completion in Q4 of this year, while permitting and community relations continue to advance.
Udinsk PFS is still expected to be completed by year-end in support of a reserve update. Infrastructure work at site has commenced, including the establishment of camp facilities. First production at Udinsk is still anticipated in 2025. With respect to exploration across the company, we continue to focus on promising targets around current operations and areas where existing infrastructure can be leveraged with the goal of extending mine life and adding to our mineral reserve and resource estimates. At Kupol, the exploration program targeting mine life extension is proceeding as planned. Targets at the south end of the Kupol vein were tested, intersecting narrow but high-grade veins. Importantly, exploration camps were established at Kayenmyvaam and Kavralyanskaya within the Kupol's synergy zone, yielding high-grade results in both areas.
At Chirano, promising results during the first half of the year were encountered as we continue to target multi-year mine life extensions and additions to its mineral resource estimates at year-end. Underground resource upgrade and definition drilling at Sariehu located additional high-grade pods, and underground drilling was carried out at Sariehu, Akoti South, and Tano, and surface drilling at the Mamnao West ore bodies. Development of an exploration drift to provide optimized drilling positions to target the overall high-grade plunging shoot is ongoing, and is expected to be completed in the third quarter. The results of the first hole exceeded expectations with mineralized width greater than previously interpreted. Drilling at Akoti South has extended known mineralization to the immediate south of the reserve area, while at Tano, two mineralized west plates have been identified. At Udinsk, exploration activities focus on infill drilling and completing the PFS geotechnical work.
On the larger Chulbatkan property, exploration drilling has commenced 2 km to 5 km to the northeast of the Udinsk resource pit along the principal Chulbatkan fault, where mineralization has been encountered. At Round Mountain, exploration activities at Phase X focus on infill drilling and extending the known mineralization. We also work to improve the geologic model and assess mine planning options with the goal of delineating high-grade material for potential underground mining, and results continue to be encouraging. At Curlew, exploration activities continue to target incremental high-margin ounces proximal to the K2 and K5 deposits by constructing a series of exploration drifts to explore the highly prospective area. Rehabilitation development is ahead of schedule with underground drilling to commence in the third quarter and continue well into next year.
To wrap up on operations and projects, our priorities continue to be the health and safety of our employees, our social license to operate, and the well-being of our communities and stakeholders, delivering strong, consistent operating results and delivering our projects on time and on budget. With that, I'll turn the call back to Paul.
Thanks, Paul. In summary, we are making excellent progress on our key initiatives and our business remains in a strong position. The Tasiast mill is expected to be running in Q4. Despite the setbacks at Tasiast and Round Mountain, we expect both assets to be strongly repositioned for the future. Our investment-grade balance sheet will continue to strengthen as we grow our production of free cash flow over the coming years. Our shares remain highly attractive, and we are initiating a buyback program to capitalize on this. With that, operator, I would now like to open up the call to questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. And to withdraw your question, press the pound key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from Tyler Langton from JP Morgan. Your line's open.
Good morning, thanks for taking my question. Just on sort of the cash cost guidance for the year, can you provide a little bit more detail on sort of the impact of inflation and higher gold prices on that guidance? Then just, I guess, when you think about the impact of potential inflationary pressures on 2022, is 2021 benefiting from any fuel hedges or supply contracts that's sort of limiting the impact this year but could kind of roll off next year?
Sure. I would look at the increase in cash cost guidance as sort of three buckets. Roughly a third between the three. The first is just not having the Tasiast ounces. Those were lower cost ounces. It's really a function of sales mix. The second being related to gold price. We're at a higher gold price than our budget. We're paying higher royalties, and we provided sensitivities on that with our guidance back in February. We said $5 an ounce for every $100 in gold price over our $1,500 budget price. The third bucket would be inflation. We're watching the trends in inflation. We've seen some inflation start to creep in just over the last month or two. That's sort of the third bucket in terms of how we expect it might impact our cash costs for 2021.
To answer your question on hedging, we have hedges in place for 2021. We also have hedging in place for 2022 and 2023, just at sort of lower levels. For example, on fuel, we're about 55% hedged this year, 45% hedged in 2022, and then lower amount again for 2023.
Okay. That's really helpful. Just actually switching to Round Mountain, I guess production was down just kind of slightly versus Q1, and costs were actually lower. I guess could you talk just a little bit about what drove this performance, and then just how you think about the second half, in terms of production, and costs?
Well, Round Mountain, as you know, we are working through the mitigation plan for the instability that had been detected earlier in the year. First and foremost, we have essentially reduced the risk to a very low number. The wall has stopped moving. We continue our dewatering program. What we've done at the mine is rather than mining in that Phase W, which was originally planned for the year, we've shifted focus to other parts of the operation. For example, we're doing another cut at the bottom of the pit. We're developing further at Gold Hill, which is a satellite deposit, as well as a portion of the main pit. Round Mountain is complex in the sense that it has a lot of sources of ore. As we continue to unload that north wall, we will continue to rely on these disparate sources of ore.
The various ore sources are going to be within the pit, in the satellite pits, from the heaps. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, the waste dump that we moved at the top of the pit proved to be mineralized, and we generated revenue there. We expect quarterly production at Round Mountain to be in that high 50s range for the next couple of quarters. It'll be roughly at that level going into next year. As we talked about on our last quarter, the higher annual production has been deferred until 2025. We expect Round Mountain production to be in that mid 200s to high 200s over the next couple of years.
Should we expect costs to take a step up in the second half or too early to tell?
Yes. Costs will step up a little bit in the second half.
Great. That's it for me. Thanks so much.
Your next question comes from Fahad Tariq from Credit Suisse. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning. Just continuing on Round Mountain. The $50 million in the remediation efforts cost, can you talk a little bit about how to reconcile that against the waste pile recovery that you just touched on? Then also, how should we be thinking about that particular cost into 2022? Thanks.
The overall, I'll paint a high level picture here. The gross cost additions at Round Mountain are related to moving that waste dump, and we will essentially break even on that because it proves to be mineralized, but also laying the wall back to a more shallow slope angle. That will generate gross additional tonnages in the overall mine plan. However, I'm very confident that we have already, and will continue to find offsets to that on an NPV basis. That doesn't include Phase S, which I'm also increasingly comfortable with. The gross additional costs at Round Mountain are not necessarily in year because our mining capacity is limited, so we're going to mine the same amount every year, but then the result is a deferral of ounces as more waste is moved in the near term.
As for the accounting treatment, Andrea will talk about that.
Yeah. Really, as Paul said, we're moving the same amount of ounces. It's just the costs are being characterized as other operating costs given the situation there.
Okay. On next year's cost, if we think about just other OpEx related to Round Mountain.
Yeah. I think for next year, we're probably going to call that mining cost, because the gross additional cost next year will be stripping costs.
Sure. I'd say just other operating costs overall, the increase that we're seeing that I've talked about this year is really kind of a one-year thing. It's not something we expect to continue, in terms of that level of other operating costs going forward.
Understood. Okay. Thank you. That's it from me.
Your next question comes from Josh Wolfson from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Thanks. Just wanted to sort of zone in a bit more on the cost for Chirano and Paracatu. For Paracatu, I think you had mentioned that there were some sort of intervention downtime items that affected that, but then also some local inflation. Just wanted to understand, I guess, where you see costs with these inflationary factors. Same thing, I guess, for Chirano, where I guess there's a bit fewer sort of external factors.
Right. There's a one-time maintenance downtime event on the conveyor. That impacted the denominator, so that was a contributor to the cost. Perhaps the biggest is the power cost increase. There is widespread drought in Brazil, particularly affecting areas with significant hydroelectric generation capacity. Given the equalization mechanism in the Brazil power market, we ended up having some exposure to the spot price. The biggest increase in cost, Q2, was related to higher than anticipated power costs. However, I should also point out that that power cost impact would have been much greater had we not owned our own power plant. We're really happy that we have those plants. In addition, we do see some local cost inflation. Labor costs are up about 5%, trending a little bit above the annual rate increases we've seen for a number of years.
We're starting to see some inflation in key consumables of which Paracatu uses a lot. For example, most notably grinding media, which is obviously a steel-derived product. As for Chirano, its costs were high principally due to the relative mix of open pit and underground, where we are in the mine sequence. We expect those costs to improve as we get deeper into the life of mine, as we go to a greater share of underground production.
Okay. There was some good commentary on production heading into 2022 and 2023. I'm just wondering, on the capital side, on some of the historical guidance provided of $800 and $700 for the next two years, there's obviously a lot of different moving parts here, and even the historical numbers were under question given potential project growth opportunities. Where's the current thinking on the direction of the future capital numbers for 2022 and 2023?
Sure. Maybe I'll take the lead on that one, Josh. Look, I think we do see a slightly different dynamic between the operating cost inflation and the capital, operating being more of a sticky, kind of lagging with things like labor. There's no question we're starting to see inflation come into the system. We think it'll probably be a little bit greater on the capital side. I think it's a flow through. There's a macro and a micro effect there with underlying commodities and microeconomic supply-demand factors. We think it's certainly here for the balance of the year and into next year. We think in some cases, it'll be a little bit greater maybe in the new project side. We haven't finalized a prediction on what that number will be.
I think the comment we're trying to say is, absolutely, those capital numbers that we put out, which were there to support the 2.7 to 2.9 million ounces production, now come with an inflation caveat, and we're going to be monitoring that and look to refine our view. I would say we're biased to obviously increasing, but I don't want to be kind of pinned down on the number just yet.
Okay. Sorry, just to clarify, I think the sort of understanding was kind of flat 900-ish going forward to sustain the new higher volume outputs. Is sort of the impression that it could be above that sort of flatline expectation or just above what the historical guidance was, which was I guess low?
Yeah. We've had a few discussions around this point. We were out there with a $987 in terms of capital, which was to support the production guidance of 2.7 million ounces going to 2.9 million ounces , 2022, 2023. We said, if to the extent we continue, I think that's the point you're making, of continuing to run out at, say, the 2.9 million ounces level, we would expect the capital to come back up towards $900. We set a postal code direction there, would be to use a sort of a $300 per ounce kind of assumption. That's how we've characterized it. I think that's all still true, but we're just trying to understand and get a little bit more focused here on where we might end up with the inflation effect on that.
Great. Thank you.
Josh, we are seeing inflationary impacts in some of our capital estimates. Part of the increase at Mansa was inflation related. As I allude to in my prepared remarks, some of it was scope related, some of it was value-added decision related, but there was an inflationary component. We're seeing engineering firms, construction companies bidding projects with higher unit rates than they would've, say, a year ago, in recognition of the fact that the overall capital project space is heating up.
Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you very much.
Your next question comes from Anita Soni from CIBC World Markets. Your line is open.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Firstly on Paracatu, I think we were looking for higher grades. I think it was from the western portion of the pit. When I look at your guidance for this year, it was saying that part of the drive up to 2.4, 2.7, 2.9 million ounces was higher grades at Paracatu. When can we expect to see that?
We're still targeting a production around just short of or around 600 this year. We did have some lower grade in the past quarter as we mined in parts of the pit that historically had lower grades. As we are in that west part, in the next quarter, in the 4th quarter, we do expect a slight upward trend in grade, but not huge.
Yeah. We're talking like 0.37 versus 0.4, right? Is that the variance?
Yes. That's right, yeah. 0.37 going to 0.4. Yeah, that's right.
Okay. Secondly, on Round Mountain. I'm still trying to understand because there was a bit of back and forth in terms of what the capital spend would be to flatten that slope and when that was going to happen. In 2022 and 2023, you've got to do this pushback, right, to basically stabilize that wall. I think that when you came back on the last conference call, you mentioned that you're kind of mining constrained there. I'm just trying to understand that CapEx spend for, I think it was 30 million-50 million tons that you had mentioned needed to be moved to flatten that slope. The timeframe I had assumed was the next two years, at whatever dollars per ton cost.
I'm just trying to understand, as I think about the capital going into next year, that to me is one of the biggest swing factors outside of your inflation comments. Could you give me some color on that?
Right. We are doing the mine plan redesign right now. We haven't finalized the slopes. We put in the dewatering wells in the last quarter. Pore pressures are coming down. We are finalizing the geotech design. The total quantum of tons is not yet finalized. You're correct in the assumption that principally the moving of those tons will take place over the next two years. We are mining constrained. Round Mountain does about 100 million tons a year. This is the principal reason for the push out on the Phase W ounces is that instead of mining a certain proportion of waste and ore, it's now greater proportion of waste within that 100 million constraint. We will work through that excess in the next two years.
The total quantum of tons, I can't tell you exactly what it'll be right now, but it's likely at the upper end of that range you talked about.
Okay. My last question, I'll pass it off to other people. Just trying to understand Tasiast at this stage. I would assume prior to the fire, that happened in the last couple of weeks, you were a little behind on the stripping and accessing the higher grade ores. That's why we saw this lower grade coming through this quarter. Some portion of that would then also have been, I guess, stockpiled, feeding the mill. How are you doing now with this sort of dealing with the fire and trying to get back up and restarted? How are the mining rates in the last month and I guess five weeks going? I guess we're contingent upon you.
One of the things that you had mentioned was that you would get ahead or get caught up on your stripping so that you could access those higher grade ores, that were expected to drive, I guess, + 2 g/ ton material next year.
That's right. We continue to mine. The mine was down for maybe two days at the time of the fire, but we're back up to the mining rate that we need. What's happening right now is principally waste movement and building, at this point today, medium grade stockpiles. As planned, we're going to get into the higher grade portion in the fourth quarter, and those are going to be stockpiled as well during the mill rebuild. In effect, what's happening is at the start of January 2022, we expect to have the mill running full tilt. We expect to be mining run of mine high grade material, in addition to having a couple of months' worth of high grade stockpile on the ground. The grade in that stockpile is not so high that it'll displace what we would've mined from high grade next year anyway.
It does provide a de-risking element in that it allows some flexibility on mining rate next year. Short story is this mill downtime provides the silver lining opportunity to get caught up on the mine plan, get back into a position where we're mining West Branch four high grades, and then de-risking next year's production profile with the availability of stockpile material.
Those West Branch high grades, they were north of 2.5 g/ ton material, right? Is that correct?
Yes.
Okay. I had one last question, sorry. Just with the Q4 guidance that you'll be starting up sometime in Q4. Apologies to ask this question, but could you provide some clarity because Q4 is a pretty big window and is it early Q4, late Q4 for the restart, or is it just near the end of the year kind of thing?
Well, I'll describe what exactly is happening. We've turned the mill. We've done the integrity checks on the mill, the motor, the trunnions, and other associated key components. In general, the big important things are okay. There's been damage to some ancillary things like the intake and the discharge chutes. Some structural work on the cyclone tower. Working backwards, the thing that needs to be replaced, and it drives the critical path to return to production, is the trommel screen.
Okay.
We placed an order, we expect to have that arrive at site, call it late October, early November. It doesn't get better than that. That is the critical path. It'll depend on the installation time, which we envisage it'll be about two weeks. It's not inconceivable that that mill is turning with the new trommel screen sometime in November. In a best case scenario, we'd have a good production month in December, but our revised guidance assumes no production this year. We would strive to try to beat that. Right now, we're assuming full-fledged, 100% throughput start up January 1st with an upside towards some production in December.
Okay, thank you. That's it for my questions.
Your next question comes from Mike Parkin from National Bank Financial. Your line's open.
Hi, guys. Just a couple questions left. The other operating expense, we got guidance for this year. How do you see that trending as we go into 2022, if you can give color on that yet?
I guess, Mike, I'd say, first of all, it's by the nature of those costs are difficult to predict. The increase that I talked about in my remarks for this year is sort of a one-time thing. They're not something we'd expect to repeat next year. There's no reason to expect at this point that next year wouldn't be back to what we've seen the last year prior to 2021.
Just one final question. Congrats in signing that agreement with the Mauritanian government. Can you just give us a bit of color, where the sticking point was on Tasiast Sud and why that was excluded to get the main part signed off, and where the kind of negotiations still sit with Tasiast Sud?
Sure. I'll hand it off to Geoff here, who was intimately involved in that whole process. Our focus and priority always was to get the main event, which is the Tasiast mine, buttoned down, and we're very glad we've done that. As it relates to Sud, Geoff.
Sure. Yeah, that's right, Paul and Mike. I guess what I would say is, our previous arrangements on Sud contemplated a different approach and ownership structure than the main agreement on Tasiast. It was delaying our negotiations, so excluding it was a catalyst for signing the agreement and banking the main economic event at Tasiast, as Paul just said. I would say that with the main agreement now signed and behind us, the door is wide open with the government to find solutions on Sud, and discussions will certainly continue. I guess, the last thing I would say is that while Sud is prospective, it's not material at this time. Certainly both the main Tasiast and Northern properties that we own remain prospective as well.
Okay. That's it from me, guys. Thanks so much.
Your next question comes from Tanya Jakusconek from Scotiabank. Your line's open.
Great. Good morning, everybody. Congratulations on getting that Tasiast mill startup, I guess, getting it on track for startup in Q4. Just two questions. I'd like to start with Paul T. Just coming back onto that inflation question, both from capital and operating costs, can we just go through in your cost structure, you mentioned labor, that specifically labor in Brazil. Are you seeing labor inflation in the U.S. and/or Russia, maybe some of the other consumables where you're seeing inflationary pressures on your costs first, then coming back to your capital, I have some more questions on that.
Okay. I'll walk through the cost bar for operating expenses. In the labor area, we are seeing cost increases that are only modestly higher than historical trends, principally in Brazil. We're starting to see it tick up in the U.S. and Russia. What I'm saying here is it's, say, 3% instead of 2%, or 4% instead of 3%. It remains somewhat tame, but in Brazil, it is something we are focused on. We are definitively seeing labor cost inflation in Brazil. What we are seeing in the U.S. and also in parts of South America is labor availability, and that will drive up labor costs down the road if there isn't a normalization on that labor availability trend. In terms of consumables, WTI is what it is. You can do that calculation yourself on a net of hedge basis.
We provide information on the degree of our hedging. The other consumables where we're starting to see, especially more recently, an uptick in inflation are key things like grinding steel, cyanide, explosives. Importantly, for example, in areas like cyanide and explosives, we're seeing 10% increases that are principally going to be impacting Q3 and Q4 year to date, the numbers there have been more tame, 2% or 3% or 4%. As we work through some of those lower cost inventories, we're now getting into material that's 10% to 12% higher in cost on the chemical chain, so cyanide, explosives, and reagents. In the case of grinding media, particularly at the large mills like Tasiast, Paracatu, and Fort Knox, we're seeing pretty significant increases of 30%, certainly looking at the next two months.
Again, it's been more tame in the first two quarters as we work through the inventories, but there we're seeing about 30% going forward. Then the last part of cost is the big maintenance category, both on services and spares. There is probably where we see the lowest pressure as yet. So I think when you put it all together, we're probably seeing, as Andrea said in her remarks, about a 1/3 of the cash cost revision upward is due to the inflation component. It's been manageable in the first half, but here in May and June and heading into July and August, we do see inflation picking up into the back half of the year on OpEx.
Inflation itself wouldn't have taken us out of our original guidance.
That's right, yeah.
Just for overall context.
Yes. Had it only been inflation, we would've been at the top end of our cash cost range.
Yes. A third of $40 an ounce is $12. Yeah, no, I got that. Maybe on just the capital cost, it seems as though you mentioned, Paul, that the inflationary pressures are more on contractors and firms. It doesn't seem as though there's specific issues or labor within that component that you focused on, or maybe just a bit more clarity there.
Yeah. In CapEx, we probably see more inflation or the risk of greater inflation than in OpEx because we're exposed to both the monetary side of inflation, in other words, the price of individual inputs going up, but also tightness in the supply chain itself. Limited number of fabricators of value-added equipment, limited pool of construction and engineering. As I said earlier, we are seeing them bid projects with higher pricing than even six months ago or one year ago. As a result of both the monetary side, in other words, price inflation on straight up commodities, we're also seeing that value add supply demand tightness. As I said earlier, with reference to Manh Choh, we are seeing 10%-15% inflation related to capital estimates on growth projects, which is higher than what we're seeing on the OpEx side.
Great. No, that's good color on that. Maybe just for Paul Rollinson, and congratulations on the share buyback. Notice on the slide that you have $150 million coming from dividends and $150 from the share buyback. Is that $150 from the share buyback a minimum? Also, what would you need to see to go beyond that $150?
Sure. Thanks, Tanya. That's certainly how we're looking at it. It's a start. The way I look at it, our intention was always to get into a buyback situation at this point in the year. We had the setback with Tasiast, and as you know, as a result, we'll be deferring production and cash flow. We're going to be down cash flow from where we thought we were going to be pre-fire. Notwithstanding that, we're continuing on with this buyback, and I think that doubly sort of underscores our confidence in the business. When we look at the $150 we've established as a sort of a baseline forever with the dividend, it seemed to us a reasonable starting point, given the scenario we're in right now, would be to target to double that $150- $300. We're on track. There's nothing operationally that we're looking at.
I guess if I were to rewind a couple of weeks, we were 90% confident we'd end up where we are today a few weeks ago when we gave a mill fire update. If we were wrong, if we were in the 10% category, and it would've been longer than fourth quarter perhaps, that might have impacted our thinking around a buyback, but it has played out as we predicted. There's nothing operationally that would prevent us from continuing with this buyback. It's a target. We've tried to give some color. I think a lot of people tend to put out 5% NCIBs and who knows what happens. We've tried to be very specific, and you should hold us accountable for that number. Could it be higher? Sure. We'll see how the world goes from here.
Okay, great. Thank you.
There is no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Paul Rollinson.
Great. Thanks, operator. Thank you everyone. Thanks for joining us this morning. We look forward to catching up in person, hopefully light at the end of the tunnel in the coming weeks and months. Thank you.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.