Welcome to the Artemis Gold Blackwater Mine Expansion Study conference call and webinar. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode, and the meeting is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If you wish to ask a question, please click on the Q&A icon on the left-hand side of the screen. You will see the options to raise your hand to join the queue and ask your question verbally, or write a question to submit your question in writing. Webinar participants who are introduced to ask their questions verbally will see a prompt on screen. Please press continue to confirm that you're ready to have your line opened. Analysts who have dialed in on the conference call may press star, then one on their telephone keypad to join the question queue.
I would now like to turn the meeting over to Steven Dean, Chair and CEO of Artemis Gold. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Gaylene, and good morning, good afternoon, depending on where you are. We're gonna share with you the results of the expansion study on our Blackwater Mine, a project under development in Central British Columbia. On the call, in Artemis's office here this morning, is Jeremy Langford, our President and Chief Operating Officer, Gerrie van der Westhuizen, our Chief Financial Officer, and Meg Brown, our VP, Investor Relations. Jeremy and I will take you through a few slides, and then we'll open it up for Q&A. I want to bring your attention to this cautionary note, as is the convention in these types of presentations. There's a lot of forward-looking information, and you should read this statement in the context of this information.
I'm also gonna propose that we take the press release as read, 'cause there's a lot of information in that. We're gonna talk a little bit about some of the highlights in a short presentation that Jeremy and I will walk you through over the next 10 or 15 minutes. We're going to try and keep a significant amount of time for Q&A. I think that's probably gonna be the most productive for all of you who are on the line. I also invite you to take a look at the short video that is embedded in the press release that went out yesterday afternoon.
That also provides a good visual summary of some of the things we're gonna touch on and the things that are in in our press release yesterday. It also provides a good visual of the stages of the expansions that we're gonna talk about this morning. The opening slide summarizes some of the key points, and one of them is the Blackwater is clearly, now, it always has been an open mine, but it is clearly now, by anyone's criteria, a tier one asset. The criteria of 500,000 ounces per year of gold or gold equivalent production is clearly, clearly met, and for the first 10 years of Blackwater's operation under this study, we're producing in excess of 500,000 ounces a year.
We are sustaining a mine life of 17 years, and much of that in excess of 500,000 ounces a year. Probably the most outstanding impact that I'm sure you'll agree with me is the benefits of economy of scale and some of the specific advantages that if you've if we've met with you before, that we've talked about when combined create a very, very low cost per ounce mine. In fact, in the lowest decile of the global cost curve at around $712 an ounce. There are not many mines, maybe around 10, that produce more than 500,000 ounces globally, and this study makes Blackwater one of those rare beasts.
Most of you are aware, I'm sure, but not only is this a tier one asset, we enjoy an exceptional location in central British Columbia. Four or five hours drive north of here to Prince George, and then a couple of hours down to the mine site. Prince George is the regional capital of British Columbia, and it enjoys a lot of infrastructure, mainly created due to the history of a century or more of forestry activity in this region. A number of towns that surround the mine and provide not only workforce resources, but also service and support and supplier support to Blackwater. Moderate climate, very supportive government policy.
Premier David Eby, who I had the pleasure of introducing at, for the second time at our BC Natural Resources Conference here in Prince George last month, made a statement that when you get your regulatory approvals, you can be assured in British Columbia that you're going to continue to operate and your investment is secure. And that is sadly a little bit of a rare thing in our sector. The other aspect I want to highlight about Blackwater is its outstanding credentials in ESG. We have the benefit of renewable, low emission, and low cost, importantly, hydroelectric power, and that is one of the key factors that drive our low cash cost per ounce.
Permits are in place, and our First Nations and the broader community support is very present. We've got a workforce of well in excess of 50% of our workforce are local, and 30% are identified as indigenous. I'm gonna hand over to Jeremy, and he's gonna walk you through the next few slides, where he can update you on how construction is progressing to date, and on phase I I'm talking about. Then touch on some of the highlights of the phase II and phase III expansions that are presented in the study. Thanks, Jeremy.
Thanks, Steve, and good morning, everyone. I won't go into too much detail with the construction update of Blackwater. Our January release for the end of Q4 illustrated that. Suffice to say that since that, engineering procurement for the project is largely complete, actually. And all of our critical equipment is currently on site. The process plant construction is progressing very well, with the ball mill installation, the shell heads and trunnions effectively complete. And the reagents and mill building structural erection is currently underway. In the TSF facility, we've got to the bottom of the Mine Creek cut-off trench, both sides of the Davidson Creek and Mine Creek facility, and our focus has been to turn towards the protection from the pressure for the melt period for 2024.
Interestingly, we've had a very dry winter at Upper Blackwater, and the team are well, well prepared for the next two to three months in relation to the season changes. Mine Creek construction has progressed very well. The two 400 tons 6040 diggers are effectively constructed, and we're going through the last stages of their construction. From memory, we've got five or six 793 250 tons dump trucks that have been completed as well. Operations integration has commenced, and our team's largely been in place since the middle of 2021. So, we're seeing really good efficiency and stability in that leadership group down there on site. Overarchingly, the project's still on track for a gold pour in H2 2024, and back to you, Steve.
Thank you, Jeremy. I'm gonna touch on some of the expansion highlights and then let Jeremy talk to some of the more intimate detail of each phase. The study highlights the opportunity, and we've talked to this previously in the build-up to construction and during construction, but it now refines and defines the opportunity to accelerate phase II, and not just accelerate phase II as we knew it before. I wanna highlight the fact that phase II in this study is now presented not as a expansion from 6-12 million tons, in other words, a doubling of processing capacity. It highlights the opportunity to increase from 6-15 million tons.
That's a material change, and I don't want that to be lost in the details of this study. That drives a whole bunch of things, including production, but also drives higher capital. I'm gonna come to that in a second. You don't get an additional 50% processing capacity than the old phase II for nothing. And Jeremy and I will talk to that in a moment. But the overall impact of accelerating phase II is very early on in the mine life, we chart a path to in excess of 500,000 ounces a year of gold equivalent production, and in fact, averaging over 500,000 ounces gold equivalent over the first 10 years.
Based on consensus gold price of $1,800 for the long term, that drives an NPV at 5% of $3.25 billion. We think that gold price is conservative, as everyone knows, that today's gold price is in excess of $2,000 an ounce, and it has been averaging above 2,000 ounces for the last little while now. So we expect to see that sort of price, particularly at the converted into Canadian dollars, which is how we operate, given that most of our capital and operating costs are in Canadian dollars. We expect to see and enjoy a free cash flow potentially significantly more based on today's gold price.
That margin between our all-in sustaining costs, being the $712 over the first 10 years, is an industry-leading margin, and generating a very significant free cash flow prediction and forecast of over $500 million free cash flow over the first 10 years per annum. And producing just under 8 million ounces of our reserve at a life of mine cost, including stockpile processing of about $780. Still very low cash cost. Next slide, please.
The expansion study, as I touched on earlier, assumes that where the phase I is built and commissioned, and as Jeremy mentioned, we're well on our way to be doing that, with first gold pour forecast for second half of this year, literally only several months away. The focus, of course, and the reason for all that is that the focus is not on phase I any longer, from a planning perspective, but the focus is now on when do we bring phase II in, and when do we bring phase III in? Given that, you know, we are enjoying higher gold prices and the outlook, including the conservative consensus numbers of around $1,800, will generate significant cash flow, and more than enough to fund an early expansion.
As I mentioned, you, some of you would have heard me say this several times in the past, the best way to generate and optimize IRR on invested capital in any business, whether it's gold mining business or the widget business, is to use operating cash flow to fund your, the expansion of your business, and not to dilute your, your shareholders, in, in that process, and not to risk too much capital in the, in, in the start-up, but, but de-risk the project through staging expansions of the business. And that's exactly what we're doing here, at Blackwater. So we're bringing p hase II forward to year three at a much higher throughput capacity, 50% higher than the original phase II, taking it to 15 million tons per annum.
Phase III forward to year seven at higher throughput capacity of 25 million tons, previously 20 million tons, under previous studies. I want to emphasize that, for those of you, particularly on the capital market side, who think that we're gonna be needing to be rushing out to raise money, it's just not the case. The beauty of our approach to expansion, expansion of our business, is that we will pull the trigger on those expansions when we either have made or have a clear path to making the money from our operating business to fund those, those expansions, and not before. So that optionality of the precise timing of when we pull the trigger on these phases of expansion is a unique feature in our approach to growing the business here at Blackwater.
I think the other aspect to touch on is the costs in this study, updating all previous studies on Blackwater to 2024 current costs. That means that, of course, we're reflecting inflationary pressures, the normal inflationary pressures that all of us have been experiencing in our day-to-day lives since the 2020, 2021, which are significant, by the way. You know, 7%-8%, technically in a CPI-type measure, but in some cases, there have been significant increases in costs. Labor is a good example of that, where those costs are not coming down. There are costs, of course, that we've experienced have fallen since 2020, 2021, and we're experiencing that in our construction of phase I. Good example, for example, is our diesel costs.
Our diesel costs are coming in under budget right now. But there are things for you analysts who are listening in on the call. I really, really need us to do some good work together on this analysis, because this industry needs your support for that analysis, given the tough times that the whole sector is experiencing, particularly on the capital cost and operating cost front. You know, there are things like steel, for example, fabricated steel in particular, because fabricated steel has a labor component in it, where we're seeing 20%-30% increases since 2021 or more in fabricated steel that we think are unlikely to come down. And we're not talking about plate steel, where it's got a very small labor component. We're talking or raw steel.
We're talking about fabricated steel with time and materials in it from labor, in our view, are not coming down. That sort of cost and that sort of experience is incorporated in these estimates. Another example is concrete. Concrete has outperformed inflation in terms of cost escalation. And we're doubtful that concrete will be falling, partly also for the same reason. Concrete is, sorry, labor-intensive because the form work, the pouring of the concrete, the manufacture of the concrete, all has a significant labor content in it, and so they're absorbing some of that labor content. And we don't think they're coming down. So I think the remarkable thing about this study is that we've absorbed all of those costs.
We have increased the processing capacity in each of the phase II and phase III capital estimates, and so therefore, they are not comparable to any previous study that the company has issued. You cannot compare them. Please do not try to our analyst friends. Please do not try to compare them. They're not comparable. They're like comparing apples and passion fruits. Inflation, higher costs of certain capital components that are not ever coming down, much higher throughput capacity in each phase now. And so we are unable to compare that capital. I think the final thing, and I'm harping on a little bit about capital, because I've heard the scuttlebutt amongst some of the analysts already, and so you know who you are.
Some of you already issued statements on capital increases and expressed some surprise in some cases. I'm surprised at your surprise, frankly, because the reasons I just talked about, the inability to compare. But I think the point that needs to be made in good analysis for our industry is this: the only way to compare properly capital costs is a capital cost intensity measure, which is best measured by capital spend divided by processing capacity per ton. And if you do that, for example, in our phase I expenditure, we have guided CAD 730-CAD 750 to build phase I.
If you use the midpoint of that guidance, on a per ton capacity of throughput of 6 million tons, our capital cost per ton, our capital intensity measure is CAD 123 per ton. That compares with some of the other development companies globally, but particularly in North America, like our friends at the Magino project, like our friends at the Côté project, like our friends at the Premier Deposit, like our friends at Valentine, and like our friends at Greenstone, and like our friends at Tocantinzinho.
There are four, five, or six, I don't know how many there were, but five or six other projects that have been built over the last few years, sort of around the time or earlier than Blackwater, where the cost per ton of their processing capacity is, in some cases, two to three times what our cost per ton of CAD 123 a ton of CapEx intensity is at phase I, Blackwater, two to three times. Then if you move your mind to what the capital intensity measure is for phase II, at the estimated CapEx for phase II, for 15 million tons of throughput capacity, that comes to CAD 66 a ton. I don't see anyone else in the industry building mines and that sort of large-scale capacity for anything like that number.
The Blackwater team is doing an exceptional job on phase I, and it will do a similar job on phase II and phase III. Then just to finish, the same analysis, phase III, we estimate CapEx at CAD 852 million for a 25 million ton expanded plant, that's an additional 10 million tons from phase II to phase III. If you do the simple math, 852 million tons divided by an additional 10 million tons of throughput capacity is CAD 85 a ton of throughput of processing capacity. Now, that's slightly higher than phase II for one reason. If you follow the phase III expansion scenario, that is a whole new plant. That is a new primary crusher and a whole new separate circuit all the way through to the gold room in phase III.
So not surprising that it's a bit higher, but still well and truly below the CAD 123 that it's costing us for phase I. So please, analysts, when you do your analysis, happy to talk to you about that, but let's consider those metrics, and recognize those things for the good of our industry and getting some good messages out to some of the investor accounts that support this industry. I think I've covered most of those points in this slide already. This is an analysis of the first five and first 10 years, and life of mine, of our financial model, and the average production and throughputs for the first five and 10 years of this mine. Next slide.
Oh, and the other thing I will mention, sorry. Thank you, Megan. The thing I will mention is all of these numbers are after repaying the CAD 382 million of project debt on phase I. And after the gold and silver participation that sit on Blackwater. So these are net of those outflows. This slide illustrates something similar, but essentially, you know, as you can see, in some cases, we're producing well in excess of 500,000 ounces in the early years of this mine, and even in years 12 and 13, projected, we're actually on 600,000 ounces a year before we reach the stockpile phase. Personally, and I'll touch on this in my wrap-up comments in wrapping up.
The stockpile phase, I think will be pushed out, because I think that will be supplanted by new ore from the pit as a result of reoptimizations at current gold prices and as a result of extensions of the mine life, because of open strikes in the northwest and in the south of the ore body. Good flexibility and exposure to gold prices, fairly modest downside from our base case in terms of impact on NPV after tax, and some fairly robust economics at spot gold today. This slide also says some similar things about sensitivity, this time translating it to Canadian dollars. I've always thought that Canada is a great place.
Australia has this attribute as well, by the way, where you have this automatic pressure relief valve, that when you see a lower gold price, almost always the Canadian exchange rate in US dollars falls, and so you get a fairly flat output on a Canadian dollar gold equivalent. And that provides a nice buffer to our margins here in Canada, and as I said, also in places like Australia. I'm gonna hand the microphone back to Jeremy to talk a little bit more about how we build phase II.
Thanks, Steven. If I can just start off with, you know, the phase I, phase II, and phase III philosophy from a design intent point of view at Blackwater is simple, maintainable, operable, repeatable, and reliable. I think the phase II and phase III expansion cases clearly demonstrate that intent and also support the disciplined approach to execution and operations, which we've been presenting to a lot of people for a long time now. Phase II, as you can see on your screen there, involves coming left, if you like, or to forward to year three of operations in the study. That involves basically a non-intrusive expansion of the facility to 15 million ton, which for those of you who know, can be done largely on the run without impacting the revenue stream of phase I operations.
It's very important. So, it also will have, when you look at it laid out, in plain view, very distinct work areas between the operational phase and the construction phase, which don't intrude on each other, importantly. phase III demonstrates this as well. The layout and the compactness of the layout provides even further opportunity, as you'll see in the third phase III case, to look at some upside options furthermore, which we'll cover off towards the back of this presentation. Next slide, please. Phase III, if you look at the render on the screen, which brings left, phase III approaches to year seven or forward, if you like. Impressively, the phase III operation will deliver on average 516,000 gold equivalent ounces a year.
I must mention, phase II was 544,000 from memory, or 561,000 actually. It had a free cash flow of about $544 million a year. By industry standards, pretty respectable. The phase III expansion to 25 million tons, of course, same again, with two, largely unintrusive, can be done on the run, if you like, with phase II operations running, alone, if you like, and not reliant on any of the other dependent parts. This long term provides a lot of flexibility and operational redundancy to Blackwater, and has really good synergies in relation to things such as spares, maintenance, planning and activity, shutdown planning.
Whereas there will always be a stream of one or two streams of the flow sheet operating at any point in time, even during a mill reline on one particular area in the plant. The, what's interesting when you look at these last two renders is, this is just a picture of the flow sheet, but the asset is representative of the same design intent across the mine services area, the operations camp, which are all expandable, repeatable, reliable, maintainable, and actually simple. So we're looking forward to showing you all down the site. We can go across to the mining part of the study, please, mate. Not much to add here other than the mining activity's quite straightforward, fairly simple.
In the study, we present a 15-year mining operation with the following years, supported by processing the stockpiles through the 25 million ton plant. Nothing's really changed in terms of the early, early mine years. Target, higher grade, low strip material. And as the phase III plant comes online, we start diving down and expanding to the north as we progressively get deeper in the pit. Certainly, near mine and regional exploration activities are something that Steven will no doubt touch on as we move through the year.
Mining operations is pretty [miserable] at 365 days a year, and yes, we work Christmas Day as well, with two 12-hour shifts and with a conventional drill and blast fleet, with two 400 ton, 6040 upload configuration shovels, which benefit for selectivity for our team onsite, and a 600 ton face shovel for the waste and normal material movement. Supported by, of course, the 793, 240 ton haul truck, and ancillary fleet. Move across to, please, mate. Pretty straight up flow sheet with impressive recoveries. I think anyone who can have a flow sheet that presents at above 93% is in a pretty good state, and Blackwater clearly exhibits this.
The phase I plant, obviously, as we know, is a three-stage crush, supported by a dual drive ball mill, with twin VSD motor operation, variable speed drives, that feed a gravity circuit and a carbon-in-leach processing train. phase II and phase III do the same, with the exception of phase II and phase III having a SAG and ball mill, and pebble crushing circuits included. This provides greater flexibility to the operation as we get more mature in the mine life to optimize things such as grind size, crush, product size, particle size distribution, and optimize the process trains as we move through the maturing mine life. Typical AARL elution circuit, and we have a sulfur burning burner system, which is detoxing the tailings slurry, supported by combustion of sulfur prill.
Next. I think I'll just hand over to Steven now to have a chat about many of the opportunities we have-
Yeah.
On this slide, that's for sure.
Thank you. Thanks, Jeremy. Before I dive into some of these things, I just want to also highlight something, based on some feedback we've received from the market. Some concerns about, you know, whether we're able to pay a dividend, whether we're, when are we gonna be able to fund the capital on phase IIs and phase IIIs, et cetera, debt service. Just very high level, and bear in mind, we are yet to make an investment decision. As we've flagged, we're gonna give ourselves until the second half of this year to do that, and maybe later than that. But, we're flagging H2 this year.
This study suggests, based on the inputs and assumptions, that we will generate, in the first five years, circa $2.5 billion. Any of you worried about how we are going to pay our project debt back, how are we gonna fund the CapEx, and maybe have some room for dividends, need to have a look at those numbers. $2.5 billion, if this study is correct, based on its assumptions, our debt service is $385 million. Phase II expenditure is $582 million. That's less than $1 billion over the five years. That leaves us, based on this study, something like $1.5 billion for other things. So we think it demonstrates a degree of comfort that this plan, this strategy of expansion, is well achievable.
And in fact, it allows us to look at some of the additional opportunities, which segues quite nicely into this slide. The first of which is one of the interesting thing, and Jeremy is probably better to talk to this one than I. But we've got some really interesting features, and this is not alone in the scale of big mines around the world. Big deposits and big mines generate an advantage of having stable centralized operation. For example, one pit, one waste dump, one TSF, which means that all of the advantages of other static infrastructure can be taken into future alternate methods for transportation of, for example, waste material.
One of the studies that will come out of this study is to see what our options are for alternate methods of transporting. It could be cable haulage, for example, and that would take advantage of the very low CAD 0.05-CAD 0.06/kWh power that we enjoy at site. That could have a material difference to our cost of hauling waste down to the waste pile and the TSF. We've already talked about this, but the electrification of the hauling fleet for ore, and waste for that matter, also stands to benefit significantly our operating cost per ton and increase our green credentials by reducing our emissions per ton of operations.
And we're working closely with Caterpillar Technology to look at whether that's a possibility in years 2027, 2028, and beyond. Automation of hauling operations, creating new jobs, but different types of jobs, by operating this haulage fleet from a room remotely, is very exciting for everyone involved in the project, particularly those locally. We've got some potential process engineering initiatives. There's sulfides in these ores, which lend itself potentially to a float circuit, which could reduce costs and improve and reduce capital in phase III, for example. That needs more work to study.
And then finally, this is an important one, which we have deliberately underemphasized to date because, you know, we're getting on with building phase I, but this deposit has been optimized, and we've made no changes to the resource and reserve base upon which the expansion study is based, to update it for current gold prices. This study is based on a $1,400 per ounce gold price, and we see real potential to revisit that optimization of this resource in the future based on current prices, as well as revise costs and economies of scale. And that's another area of study which we will embark on over the next year or two, that will drive a significant, in my view, increase in mine life.
In addition to the fact that the deposit, like many large-scale single deposits of Blackwater's characteristics, is open to the north, the northwest, and the south. And I'll show you some slides on that, right now. This is a slide that, many of you have seen before, but, the pit shell, resource pit shell, when run at $2,000 an ounce, versus the 1,400, which is the purple outline, the 2,000-ounce shell is the red outline. Just by way of summary, that adds, if run, another 3.2 million ounces of gold equivalent production, if that was deemed to be economic in the future. So there in itself, without a single drill hole being drilled, shows the potential to add significant years to this mine life on top of the existing study.
And if we move to the next slide, it'll hopefully demonstrate what I was talking about before. As you can see, the gold blocks are, that is the resource block model, and as you can see, it pokes through the northern pit wall and down plunge to the north and northwest, as well as a more vertical structure to in the south. It plunges and pokes through the current pit design wall, telling us that we need to do a lot more drilling. And that will be on the agenda over the next 12 months or so as we get into phase I operations and we start to generate cash flow, from which we can start doing this drilling.
So lots of opportunity to re-extend mine life, even at these higher throughputs, that the study considers. That brings us to the end of our formal deck. I think we went for a little bit longer than we planned, but I hope it was valuable information. And, operator, we're happy to open up to questions, voice, and text.
Sure. We'll now begin the question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please click on the Q&A icon on the left-hand side of your screen. You'll see two options: to raise your hand to join the question queue and ask your questions verbally, or write a question to submit your question in writing. Webinar participants who are introduced to ask their questions verbally will see a prompt appear on screen. Please click continue to confirm that you're ready to have your line opened. Analysts who have dialed in to the conference call may press star then one on their telephone keypad to join the question queue. Our first question is from Wayne Lam. Wayne, your line is open.
Yeah, thanks, guys, and thanks for hosting the call. Maybe for Steven, I guess on the CapEx intensity, I mean, you're, you're right, the intensity metrics for phase I are quite low versus some of the comparable Canadian projects. I guess from a risk standpoint, like if you think about it the other way, perhaps some might say that, you know, that CapEx number that you guys have guided has room to increase, just given the other project build that have been completed. So just curious, how you guys have been able to kind of mitigate some of those cost pressures seen and how you're able to complete the Blackwater build on phase I at such a lower intensity spend.
Thanks, Wayne. That's a great question. Look, there's no single answer to that question, Wayne, and I'll invite Jeremy to comment. But my brief response would be, it's a number of things. Probably the most important one is the importance of construction duration. If you look at some of the other developers in our sector, almost without exception, every construction period duration is well in excess of ours. And what it recognizes is that construction has a fixed cost component that is incurred regardless of whether you're under intense like a construction activity or otherwise. Every month, you incur every week, you incur X dollars a month or day.
And so if you can build it quickly and on time and not be stopped for any reason, and some of you have heard this story before, but if any of you built or renovated homes, and a builder says he's gonna do it in three months, and then he finds white ants, and then he has to stop work and re-engineer your floor, and then your, your instead of three months, your renovation is gonna take 12 months. The original price of $250,000 to renovate your bathrooms and kitchen, all of a sudden go to $1 million very quickly. So it's the same sort of thing. That would- I would say that is the single biggest factor.
Of course, there's the Jeremy factor that he would never say, but Jeremy and his team have built probably more of these in the last 10 of scale gold projects than almost any other company in our space. I think that experience bears well. You know, our ability to react and on schedule changes, on quantity changes, on price changes, whatever comes at us, is a skill that is a construction skill that few have. Jeremy, you want to add to that, or have I covered it?
No, thanks for the kind words, Steven. I think the maturity of the quantities and the engineering design too is, when you move into the execution phase, critical, and I think the project demonstrates that. Conversely, a lot of companies and a lot of projects I see have a ramp up when they, you know, when they initiate project execution. Whereas our team was in place well before that, for the visuals and Wayne's been to site as well. That management team was in place well before the execution phase commenced. So the ramp-up period to get into construction is shortened significantly by being prepared in that event. So I think there's a number of things, and certainly only having one winter-...
A very tepid part of British Columbia and Canada is certainly something that the plan is demonstrating the benefit of.
Did that answer your question, Wayne?
Yeah, that's perfect. Thanks. And then maybe just looking at the capital for the expansions and even on the capital intensity, it, you know, it seems to have increased by quite a bit. And, you know, aside from just the larger capacity sizing on the expansions, just wondering, you know, where you guys are seeing kind of the cost pressures on that? And then maybe just curious what the rationale was behind pushing the expanded design even further to 25 million tons per day versus the prior feasibility study.
I'm not sure of your comment that there's—I think you said even on a cost per ton of intensity, that there's escalation, and that's just not factually correct. There's actually a reduction from phase I to phase II, from CAD 123 per ton of capacity to CAD 66. That's half per ton of capacity for phase II additional capacity. And then phase III, as I mentioned, it's 85 per ton of capacity, being 10 million at CAD 852 million, because we're building a whole separate plant, including primary crusher and everything, where phase II expansion takes advantage of the existing crushing infrastructure.
So, I think the analysis will show a reduction, not an increase in intensity, which is the right measure. Where are we seeing a cost pressure, as I mentioned earlier, you know, anything that labor touches, fabricated steel, concrete, et cetera, we're definitely seeing a permanent cost change and cost change above the CPI, and all of those have been factored into our capital estimates in phases II and III.
Okay, great. Thanks. Yeah, I'm calculating on the incremental expanded capacity from phase I to phase II, and then II to III, relative to capital, but I can review the numbers outside of that. And then maybe just curious, you know, going back to the phase I construction progress, you know, good, good to see some of the progress being made at site and on the transmission line clearing. Just wondering if there's been any elements that have kind of lapsed in terms of timeline, for example, on the enclosure of the plant. And then just curious, when the construction of the power line might be completed?
Short answer is, as Jeremy said, we continue to be on schedule to H2 gold pour. Things like enclosure of the mill buildings and reagent buildings is on schedule. We couldn't enclose them until things like the ball mill was assembled, and that is now largely complete, and we are beginning to clad those buildings as we speak. And transmission line is midsummer for commissioning.
Okay, perfect. Good to see things on track, and best of luck with the remaining build.
Thank you. Next question.
The next question is from Chris Thompson. Chris Thompson, your line is open.
Great. Good morning, gents, and then Meg, thanks for hosting this call. Two quick questions for you. The first question, I guess, if you, if you decide to go ahead with the, the early phase II expansion, what sort of timeframe is needed to, to start phase II in order to deliver the, the 15 million ton per hour anticipated in year three? Is this just a roll-on from phase I?
To a certain extent, yes, and to a certain extent, some of the site presence there will be some just simple roll-on. There's some lead items, as you can imagine, things like Ball Mill, SAG mills will require ordering, but they're perhaps in the second half of this year. But to the extent that any outflow will be required for that, they would be very modest deposit types of, you know, sub CAD 10 million, if that, to get in the queues of some of these long lead item equipment for phase II. Anything to add, Jeremy?
Great, thanks. Thanks, Steve. And, you know, Steve, I do hear you, by the way, as far as capital intensity and that, but just wanna delve a little bit into the sustaining capital, I guess, for the first five years of mine life. I think you quote CAD 499 million there, which again, is materially higher than the feasibility. But as we know, is this just a factor of the higher run rates moving from the six past the 12 million ton a year to the 15 million ton a year?
In terms of nominal numbers rather than per unit.
Yeah.
Yes, I think the analysis has to be based on ounces and/or and or tons processed to be comparable?
Yeah. Okay, gents. All right. Thanks a lot, and congratulations. Good call. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from Andrew Mikitchook from, sorry, just Andrew, your line is open.
Hey, can you hear me?
Hi, Andrew.
Yes.
Hi, Steven. Maybe, maybe a question for Jeremy, I think. In terms of, you know, having ultimate flexibility to push the go button on phase II, how much kind of basic or detailed engineering would you like to do? And, how much would that cost, and how long would it take so that, you know, you have ultimate, as I mentioned, flexibility to go to the board with a very detailed plan?
Yeah, thanks, Andrew. Yeah, I obviously as an engineer, I'd like to do as much as I can. But within reason, we would look at you know some catalysts around the phase I construction, triggering a certain sequence of events where I would present to Steven recommendation of where we need to go next. Largely, the process facility, if you like, with the study and obviously with stage 1 intact, a lot of the quantities and a lot of the design is largely not done, but very well advanced beyond a standalone FS, if you like. So the milling circuit and the elution circuit is pretty much known. So I don't see too much of that early engineering work being needed to be done.
But certainly, we wanna maintain discipline in completing stage 1 and making sure that we get the stage one asset running well. In parallel with that, with these activities, then I'll be in a position to speak to Steven and the board.
Okay. And I think this question, my next one, Jeremy, is also for you. It's been partially answered earlier, but in terms of visible things that we should watch for in your updates, in your photo updates of construction between now and first gold pour was already mentioned, and closing the buildings, is there anything else that we should keep an eye out for in terms of, you know, seeing the wiring, piping crews up there or, you know, completion of liners or dams or something? What... Or maybe more accurate, what are you watching for between now and then?
Andrew, you're gonna have to come up and visit, 'cause you won't be able to see inside the buildings, 'cause a lot of the activity will move inside buildings. And the external construction, like the crushing circuit, for example, will get closer to completion over the next month or two.
Yeah, I'd also say that, you know, the transmission line right away is effectively, for the large part, you know, should be complete within the next short term. So, there's not two major optical, you know, changes that you'll see when you look in a photo now. It gets a little bit more, I wouldn't say boring, but certainly with the sheds going up in the process facility, the ore being on surface, largely in the open pit. And the TSF cut-off trench pretty much in final condition now before we start, and we have progressively started filling the Zone S material for the wall. The footprint overall is largely intact and there's not too much more to do.
Yep.
Well, okay. It's great to hear the level of confidence there, and yeah, I look forward to an invite for any site visits that you guys are running there. Just one simple last question, if you guys have the patience for me, and I might have missed it, but when the slide went up with the... I think that was a $2,000 optimized pit. Just for scale, if you could give us a sense of the strip ratio. I think the strip ratio averaged out to just fractionally over two on the current pit. How does that look on that kind of $2,000 pit at this point in time, without additional-
Yeah, I-
... in field drilling?
Andrew, I can give you... I don't know the answer to that question. I think it's incremental, and bear in mind that most of those answers are on the low wall, the northwest wall, downhill. So it won't, to the extent that a pushback is required, it won't be a significant addition, I don't imagine, to the life of mine strip ratio. But I don't know the precise answer. And just on your comment around progress, look, it's the mining business. We're grateful for the effort by the team so far, but, you know, it is the mining industry.
Things can happen, and it's just a question of how good our team is in responding to whatever those things might be, and continue to deliver on the things we promised.
Okay. Well, thank you very much for the detail on those answers. Well done to Jeremy and your team, and then all the engineers who put this together. I'll sign off and let other people ask questions.
Thank you.
Thank you. We're running short of time, but we'll take one... Operator, we'll take one more question, please.
Certainly. The next question is from Don DeMarco. Don DeMarco, your line is open.
Well, thank you. Just got a couple quick ones. Jeremy, will Sedgman be involved in phase II and III development?
... We haven't made any decisions on, you know, the development of stage 2, as Steven mentioned earlier. But certainly they're performing well in the process facility, and, you know, we'll consider using the people we know for sure.
Okay. And so you're now four months away from-
It's too early, Don, to make that decision. You know us well enough. We make people work for the relationships that we have, and you know, we've got to finish this one first.
Okay. Thank you for that. And if time permits, if I may ask another quick question or two, is that okay?
Go ahead and we'll, there's one other question I see from Jeremy Hoy, so we'll deal with that one, too, and then I think we're out of time, but keep going, Don.
Okay. So, you're now four months away from H2. So when do you expect to get more granular on the timing of the first pour?
In the summer.
Okay. So we wouldn't expect it to be in the for beginning of H2 then, but we'll look for updates then. Now, you mentioned, Steven, that a unique aspect of this project is that you can pull the trigger on phase II when you have a clear path to making money. But how do you balance this perceived flexibility against the potential savings from not demobilizing the team?
Well, that'll be simply, well, a part of the analysis, I mean, that we'll do in the second half of this year, around the investment decision.
Okay. And then just final quick one. Can you just comment on the labor availability and labor inflation? How many positions do you need to fill as you transfer beyond first pour in H2?
Good question. The workforce is for operating phase of the mine for phase I is around 300. We are in the process of retraining some of the construction, particularly the earthmoving workforce to migrate across to operating phase and the equipment fleet that is employed there. I think we've said this in the past, Don, but one of the sad things about what's happening in the communities around us, and there's several, seven or eight towns to the north, the northwest, the east and the southeast of us, which are all, almost all have their heritage and history in the forestry business.
The forestry business, I think we've seen in the last, at least, five or six years, up to 20 mills, pulp mills and sawmills close because of the certain dynamics and downturn in that sector. And even as recently last month, there was, there's a sawmill close in Vanderhoof, which is the closest town to the mine, to the north of us, where there are several hundred people are or will be laid off. And, you know, the great thing that we can offer it to the community is jobs and training. And, you know, and an electrician who works in the maintenance group of a sawmill or pulp mill doesn't require that much retraining to be an electrician in a CIL process plant.
You know, that's exactly what we're doing, and that's exactly what Jeremy touched on earlier. Because we are in a very fortunate and privileged position in this community to be able to take up some of the surplus skill base that is existing in the community as a result of the downturn in the forestry sector.
I see. Okay. Okay, thank you for that. Well, good luck with the completion of phase I, and we'll look for updates as you progress.
Thank you, Don.
The next question is from Jeremy Hoy. Please go ahead.
Hi, Steven Dean, Megan, Jeremy, and Gerrie. I appreciate you guys taking my call, my question here last minute. It's been some good discussions, so I'll be quick with my questions. Jeremy, you touched on this when you answered Andrew's question about things to watch for. You mentioned several of the earthworks geo- and geotech components of the project. Do you have an estimate of how much of the earthworks are completed in terms of percentage-wise for the phase I?
I can't give you an exact number. You know, our next update will be obviously end of Q1. But I can say that the, you know, on a ratio of 100% of the total earth we need to move to pour gold. We're on track and on schedule. All of the mining infrastructure, access ways, and even the haul roads have been cut in. The TSF main wall trench, diversion system, and all the northern, southern, and central water transfer and collection areas are complete. Interestingly, we completed the late 2015-2016 earthworks, which is the reversal of the Davidson Creek, some six months ahead of schedule, which was last year.
So, certainly, what I think you'll expect to see, and you can see towards the second quarter and as we move through this year, is a pretty compact work front, particularly at the TSF area, where really it's just the bulk fill activity, as the main wall is coming out of the ground. Everything else pretty much is in place. Yes, we've got some operations camps and expansions to do with the camp areas, but the key critical areas are well advanced, and have met all of our expectations to date.
Okay, that's, that's helpful. Thank you. And, and I guess, as has been mentioned, the benefit of the pit being so close to the surface, the bedrock, is, is quite beneficial to the project as well. One last one. Obviously, you, you touched on this with the upside potential and, the low cut-off grade you've used for the reserves. If I remember correctly, I think there's another 4 million ounces of gold sitting in resources. And, you know, obviously a lot of factors going into the analysis of potential pit expansions. Are you guys going to plan to provide a reserve and resource update regularly each year, where those assumptions will be revisited?
Once we get into operations, Jeremy, yes, that would be the normal convention, as you know, for our industry.
Yep, certainly. Okay, great. That's it for me. Thanks, and congrats. 500,000 ounces is a great place to be.
Thanks, Jeremy. Unfortunately, everyone, we're out of... In fact, we're over time. But I do appreciate everyone's time, commitment, and contributions and questions. For those of you who have unanswered questions, Meg will help facilitate responses to those over the next 24-48 hours. Send her an email or the info@artemisgoldinc.com email address, and we'll do our best to address any outstanding questions. But once again, thank you for your time and participation, and we look forward to seeing all of you in person sometime soon.
This brings to a conclusion today's webinar. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.