Good afternoon. Welcome to the 2019 B2Gold Investor Day. I appreciate everybody who came from out of town to be here. For those of you in the live webcast, we appreciate your attention as well. We have assembled a great lineup of speakers from all around the world, including country managers, executives. We also have several Board members in attendance, including Robin Weisman, Bongani Mtshisi, Jerry Korpan.
The lights are bright, so I'm not sure if any others are here. I'd like to introduce, to start off, Clive Johnson, President and CEO. He'll be doing the opening remarks, and then I'll invite the other Senior Executives, Mike Cinnamond, Bill Lytle, Tom Garagan, and then the VP of Government Relations, Neil Reeder, to come up and get the day going. Thank you.
Good afternoon. As Ian said, thank you all for coming out and joining us, and thank all of you on the webcast. Got a lot of information to share with you, I'm confident you'll find it interesting. Lots of different speakers covering all of the things we're doing around the world. There's really two reasons we're here, we're together this week. Of course, the major one is this Investor Day presentation. We decided to do this partly because it's a good opportunity to get all our executive team, our country managers, mine managers, all the executive group, our Board together in one place.
We do that every year at the AGM, and it's a great success, and the ability to have meetings within the different management groups talking to each other. Just it's a team-building exercise, but it's also a really important part of an international company being able to communicate and share the experiences that we have collectively around the world. This is going to become our semiannual get-together for all of the executives from around the world and our team.
I think it's a very useful experience. We thought, while we're all together, why not share with our investors and talk about what's happened in 2019 and all the exciting things that are coming up for 2020. This is a cautionary statement. You've seen these before, and basically what it says is that certain things that you're going to hear today are going to be forward-looking, so may therefore, of course, be subject to change. You're going to hear from these gentlemen once I'm done.
Everybody here knows where our projects are located around the world. Just a couple of things to touch on while this slide is up. Nicaragua, I think everybody knows that we've changed our ownership structure in Nicaragua and joined forces with a company called Calibre Mining. The reason, the thinking behind that, the strategy and the rationale is the fact that those mines, the two Nicaragua mines, were getting smaller in our world in terms of the size of new projects we've been developing over the last number of years.
They were, in fact, great mines for us. They will continue to be for Calibre. We felt it was better to vend them into Calibre effectively, and we end up owning, with the deal having closed now, 32% of Calibre. We're still exposed. We weren't looking to get out of Nicaragua. We do believe in the country, we believe in its future, and it's been a great place for us to be mining. Of course, it was the start of production for B2Gold. This is a very elegant deal, in my view, for everyone.
It's a real win-win-win because all of our employees, who we care deeply about, as you know, they have their jobs. They're transferring to Calibre, who is a company that's historically been an exploration company in Nicaragua, Canadian-based as well. They wanted to become a producer, so they have brought in some good executive people at the Calibre level, but they get to inherit a really great mining team and all the people that we have had in Nicaragua.
Nicaragua's were a great team to have working with us, and I know we all have fond memories and we'll be very supportive looking forward as Calibre goes forward there. For us, we win-win-win in the sense that the government is happy with the deal. They understand that the Canadian culture that was there with us is still there with Calibre, and they understand that Calibre is going to focus actually on even further consolidating opportunities in Nicaragua and other places in Central America. A real win for the local people, all the people, all the employees, and all the CSR projects and those other excellent things we've been doing about being responsible miners will carry on with Calibre.
Now when we look at production, we'll be consolidating the 32%, I think it's about 32%, of the ownership we have in Calibre shares. We'll show our production, we'll show that portion of their production. A very successful deal. I think it's also maybe a signal of the fact that we're a growing, maturing company, as you get bigger, you need to decide how you're going to spend your time, your executive time, all of your efforts in the field, et c. Now we get to focus on the three core assets. Of course, being Fekola and Otjikoto in Namibia and, of course, Masbate in the Philippines.
Those are three good projects, you'll hear today, you'll hear more about them. Good, solid mine life, really good production profile looking into several years into the future. That'll be the focus from a production and operations point of view. You're going to hear a little bit today from others about Gramalote in Colombia. I just want to say on the outset, this is a project that's kind of evolving in a very interesting way, very rapidly, suddenly. There was a few years ago, we decided to start diluting our interest out of the joint venture with AngloGold Ashanti and Gramalote because the economics didn't look very good, and we thought we had better places to spend our money.
Since that time, a bit more drilling was done, but there's some important geological remodeling done with AngloGold Ashanti working with our people as well. Suddenly now we have a much more interesting project in the economics that we see today. It has the distinct potential, in my view and our view, to become a producer, and we'll know very shortly. There we're infill drilling. There's a large portion of the resources in the inferred category, it needs to be infill drilled.
There's been a lot of good work done over the years in terms of metallurgy engineering, in terms of local work by AGA, did a very good job in permitting and also dealing with local community. We have an environmental impact assessment stage one permit already. That project is going to come into real focus this year. We're spending quite a bit of money, as you'll hear in the budget, close to $40 million with AGA to infill drill. We're going to come out with a preliminary economic assessment in January of next year, and we're going to have a full feasibility study by the end of next year, knowing whether it moves forward.
The potential for Gramalote is to produce around 400,000 oz or more a year for a pretty decent mine life, and some of the recent economics have been very promising. You'll hear more about that, especially as the months come along. Just a couple of things I want to touch on before handing over to the guys for all the exciting detail on what we're doing. Those of you, many here and many on the webcast will know us from the past.
I think one of the keys to our success is always worth highlighting, and that's experience. The remarkable experience of the executive group and the country managers and the mine managers, these remarkable teams that we have. 12 years ago, we started this company, we had 32 employees. We peaked a little while ago at 6,000, including Nicaragua, employees around the world. They're driven by an extremely experienced group. We joke around, but it's actually true that between the executive team, there's 280 years of working not only in the mining industry, but working together in the mining industry between B2Gold.
The time when you look back, unfortunately in the last 10 years, there's still so many problems in our industry, so many mistakes, to be frank, so much money lost through poor investment decisions or poor construction or geological modeling or all the other things that can be problematic in our industry. One of the reasons we've been able to navigate these waters for 12 years and build this company from zero production to 1 million ounces of gold a year in four different countries and five mines is the experience factor.
That's something that I think we need more of in the industry, and maybe we'll see some of that as there's more mergers and acquisitions with companies that are bigger but with better management teams as the industry moves into more of a consolidation. One of the things we hit head on when we talk about B2Gold and what we do and how we do it is political risk. That's something where sometimes you don't really emphasize that because there's negative connotations about it. We take a different view of that.
For one company or one group's political risk or perception of that could be too scary for them to go and do it. There's another opportunity for another group, such as ours, who's prepared to go and do the hard work to understand these cultures around the world. The slide we're looking at right now, slide eight, shows you the history between Bema and B2Gold of the various countries over the last 30 odd years that we have had great success in. From Chile, the U.S., Russia, South Africa, Nicaragua, Namibia, the Philippines, and Mali.
They all have something in common. We've been there, and they've all been very successful, and we've been very good in the community. We've been very good working with the governments. That is so important these days. The key or the secret to, or the key to political risk management, in my view, is delivering on the promises you make. We talk a lot in this company about our culture, which is based on the fundamental principles of fairness, respect, and transparency. If you go to these different cultures and different countries and you treat people in a way with respect and transparently, and you deliver on the promises you make, you make a lot more friends than enemies.
One of the keys is if you go to a foreign politician and you promise that you're going to build a mine within two years, and you're going to spend all this money doing it and create all these jobs and pay all these taxes, they actually believe you're going to do it because you're a Western company. If you don't do it, sometimes you can get into lots of different interesting challenges within the country that you're in. That's one of the keys, and I think that you'll hear more about it today and about the approach. That's the strategy, the strategic approach.
I kind of figure it's an extension of the Canadian culture, this idea of fairness, respect, and transparency, and treating people the way you'd like to be treated if you were in a country and some foreigners came in to build a gold mine in your community. We're looking at the very impressive production growth chart that we've had for a while, and a lot of you have seen this before. Just as a reminder, I touched on it. From 12 years of no gold production to basically 1 million ounces or very close to 1 million ounces this year through the various projects that we've seen and talked a little bit about in Namibia and then Otjikoto, Masbate, and of course, now Fekola as well.
A dramatic growth profile, and we're going to hear more of the details from these gentlemen behind me. What comes next? Well, obviously, the next focus for us is going to be, or the focus for us, as well as doing what we do well, is going to be looking at organic growth. I put one slide in here on share price performance. This is over the last 10 years. I want to talk about this because I want to talk about the sector a little bit and our place in the sector. I think that this slide shows the B2Gold share price over 10 years, the gold price over 10 years, and the S&P/TSX Global Gold Index. It's a really fascinating chart.
The green on the chart is the gold price, which is up 42% over the last 10 years. The gray line is the S&P/TSX Global Gold Index of the producing gold companies, down 37%. That's unusual, and that's really not the way it should be. If someone wants to talk about the money lost in the gold sector, investors in the gold sector over the last 10 years, it isn't really very valid to blame the gold price, which we would often assume would be the cause. This refers back to what I talked about management and the importance of management and the importance of getting it right and some of the problems that we see in the industry when we don't have that.
Of course, in our situation, we're up 360% 10 years from when you look at this chart. Dramatic outperformance by ourselves and a few others in the industry. I think this is a chance now for the industry, and I'm quite pleased to see that I think we're starting to turn the corner, that we're starting to see investors be very picky in their gold investments. Just because gold's touched $1,500 doesn't mean that people are going to buy every gold stock. Far from it. They're going to look for quality, and that's a discipline we haven't always seen from the investors in the gold space as well.
I think for us, this is a great time to continue this dramatic growth that we've had, but continue to be one of the growing number, hopefully, of companies in this industry that runs it like a business, that runs responsible gold mines profitably and takes the cash flow that we earn from these mines and put some of it back into building the company, finding more gold and building more gold mines. Now we've introduced a dividend plan, which is another sign of a maturing company. That was the idea a long time ago.
If we could create significant amounts of cash flow from gold production and use some of it for growth and some of it to dividend to our shareholders, that's where we want it to be. We've started that point now. That's another important milestone in our growth. In terms of strategy, looking forward, well, it's going to be a lot of what you've seen so far. You're going to see a focus on responsible mining, focus on profitability, focus on debt reduction. As I mentioned, we're starting to pay a dividend. We're going to focus, as we have for a long time, primarily on organic growth. In our pipeline of projects, we have, of course, the Fekola expansion, which you'll hear about, which is kicking in early next year.
Also, we have the exciting results we came out with more today on Fekola exploration, where we're seeing 20 km north of Fekola in the area we call Anaconda, some tremendous drill results indicating the potential for more Fekola type deposits in the sulfides. Tom and Andy are going to talk about another significant discovery for our group and tremendous potential, obviously, to see how much more we can grow production in Fekola. I touched on Gramalote. That's in the pipeline. That could be a very important project for us, where frankly, there's very little money in the share price for it today. As we move into next year, I think we'll come into clear view whether Gramalote is going to be a mine for B2Gold and AngloGold Ashanti.
I'd be betting on the fact that it is likely to be, in our view. Stay the course, continue where we've been going. We're not likely to get involved in very much M&A, mergers and acquisitions. We've talked a lot about before the idea that the cheapest ounces are the ones you find, and we have a tremendous track record of doing that, along with accretive acquisitions over the years.
We look at the world today, and the world has changed from what it was four or five years ago when we bought Fekola using $500 million worth U.S. of our shares. There was no competition at the time for one of the best undeveloped gold projects in the world because of the nature of the market at the time and the disappointments of so many companies not doing a very good job of things like building gold mines.
The world has changed today. Now the competition is going to be a lot of competition for projects out there. Fekola, we don't see a lot of Fekola type projects out there today. I would suggest that if Fekola was out there today as it was four and a half years ago with a great feasibility study in a good location for gold mining with the economics that it had, if it was there today, I think the bidding would start at well over $1 billion for Papillon, the company that owned Fekola.
We paid $500 million , as I mentioned. That's part of being opportunistic and that's part of being contrarian. Now the companies that weren't growing when we grew, they need to grow. Because of the lack of exploration in the world in the last 10 or 15 years, there's not many good projects out there. The competition is going to get thicker and heavier. I hope we don't go back to the silly season where people are dramatically overpaying for gold projects.
From our point of view, this is a great place to be positioned because we can look into our pipeline and see which of these organic growth opportunities become mines growing our gold production and be opportunistic in looking at other opportunities and other assets. I think the gold mining industry needs to regain some credibility with investors, not just gold investors in general. I like the trend that we're seeing now with what's happening in Barrick and some of the other companies. There's some really stellar performers like Agnico Eagle and a few others that I would consider owning shares in, very few. I think it's a growing number of responsible companies.
We need to show the gold investors and hopefully, ultimately, the generous investors that we can run this like a business, which is clearly something we and a few others have done for years. I see great opportunity there where we can go to the general funds and say, "You don't need to buy this stock because you think gold's going higher." If you don't think gold's going to go higher for the next five years, you can probably still do very well with investing in B2Gold and a few other companies, because the ones that run it like a business, that can continue to grow and be profitable and pay dividends irrespective of what the gold price is doing.
That's a bit of an overview and a summary from me. We're very excited about 2020. This has been an incredible year, and I just want to thank everyone involved in our group and our shareholders for the support that we've received over the years. It's been a hell of a year. It's been a tremendous year, great success, and it set us up for a great 2020. With that, I'm going to pass it on to our next speaker.
Thanks, Clive. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Mike Cinnamond, and I'm the CFO of B2Gold. I'm going to comment a little bit on the financial overview of the company. Two main areas or three main areas. The first one is just how we see us rolling through to year-end here. It's not that long ago since we put our Q3 results out, you should be very familiar with those. A little bit about our liquidity position as at the year-end and where we see that going, just a very high-level overview of where we're going next year in terms of budget timing, et c, and the main components of the budget.
With that, this slide in front of you now, it just shows how we see the year turning out. It's all pretty much on or better than guidance. First of all, gold production, consolidated guidance range was $935-$975. That included 100% in Nicaragua for the whole year, and as you know, we restructured our interest in Nicaragua on October 15th. Subsequent to October 15th, we're only taking into account our proportionate share of Nicaragua, which is currently 34%. Even though we've lost that component, almost 70% of Nicaragua for most of Q4, we still think we're going to meet somewhere in the middle of our gold production range of $935-$975.
We haven't adjusted these numbers for the fact that we don't have Nicaragua in there for the whole year, and that's because the other operations outperformed already through a year. Fekola's had a great year. We guided upwards in Q3. Masbate's had a stellar year, and so has Otjikoto. They've all done very well. Because we were ahead there, we still think we're going to come somewhere middle plus of that $935-$975 consol range.
On the operating cost side and the all-in sustaining cost side, we guided $520-$560. We think we're going to come in at or below that range. Again, that's really a function of Fekola running so well. Fekola, we're not guiding that we'll be at or below its cost range, but we think we'll be in the range, and that's because throughput was going so well there that we were actually able to put more material through the mill than we thought. We put some of the low-grade stockpiles through. That allowed us to have higher production, but also lower grade.
Overall, we're right on guidance for that cost range, even though we have more ounces. Masbate and Otjikoto, both of those have done very well. Production from Masbate focused mainly from Main Vein, lower stripping, lower transport costs. Cost guidance there we think is at or below for cash costs and indeed all-in sustaining costs. Otjikoto as well, ran very nicely, more ore than modeled coming out of Wolfshag Pit and a better cost profile than we thought. All of which are good things. Again, we think they'll be at or below the low end of Otjikoto's range for cash costs and all-in sustaining costs.
All-in sustaining costs overall, $835-$875. We think we'll come in on a consolidated basis within that range. You don't see that cost beat that we're thinking we may see on the cash operating side come into the all-in sustaining costs, that's mainly because of the higher gold prices in the year. Royalties were higher than we budgeted, those flow into those all-in sustaining cost numbers. We think we'll be in that range comfortably, $835-$875. Projected gold revenue, $1.3 billion. Even I can work that out at a base of 900 oz and something thousand ounces and somewhere around $1,400 for the year. We're still on track for where we thought we'd be in the operating cash flow side, somewhere around that $500 million mark.
We're very pleased about that. This slide just really lays out where we got to in Q3. I'm not going to go through all of these numbers because I think we just talked how we see how they're going to turn out for the full year. One thing I would comment on in this slide, though, is the dividend. Q4 saw us declare and pay our first ever dividend for B2Gold. We're very happy with that. Quarterly dividend, $0.01 a share. It's the intent of the company and the Directors going forward, I believe, to pay a dividend quarterly now at the same level, at least as a starter dividend.
In terms of Q4 outturn itself, we've talked about the continuing strong performance of the sites. We did close that Calibre deal in Q4. In cash flow terms, that brought in $53 million, $40 million U.S. as part of the cash proceeds for consideration, also $13 million as part of a preliminary working capital settlement amount. As we look into 2020, we should see approximately another $17 million come in cash from that Calibre deal.
That'll be $10 million from the second, the deferred tranche of the proceeds of $10 million and another approximately $7 million of settlement of the working capital. In Q4, as well as previously guided, we intend to repay another $100 million outstanding on the revolver. We had paid $100 million up until the end of Q3, and we expect to pay another $100 million this quarter. Tax installment-wise, we tried to give you some cash tax guidance for the company. We still think we're on track to hit that $130 million that we had guided in Q3 and laid out there.
Just a reminder, this year we had a Fekola tax double-up because we basically had to settle up 2018's taxes in 2019 and also pay 2019's installments. I think as you recall from last year and as we've tried to explain all the way through the year, for Fekola, 2018, we paid installments based on 2017, but we didn't really generate any taxable income in 2017, so the installments paid were low. When we settled up 2018's liability in 2019, it was basically the full amount of 2018. We also had to pay installments in 2019. Gramalote, as Clive mentioned, we're moving forward there.
We gave guidance in the end of Q3 that there's actually about $6 million that was approved for Q4 for Gramalote just to move that forward until we get into 2020, and we'll talk about that a little more in a second. Next slide, just giving you a picture of liquidity position and balance sheet overview. I guess key here is, if you recall, when we were building Fekola, part of that strategy was that we want to do it without equity. We want to use operating cash flow from our existing ops and our debt facilities. Thank you to our syndicate of banks, led by HSBC, and some of whom are here, because they allowed us to do that with some of the debt facilities that they made available.
Now we're in the second part of that strategy, and that's to repay that debt. In 2018, we took the first steps, we repaid the convert that we had outstanding at $258 million. In 2019, we expect to repay approximately $220 million, $200 million on the line, the revolver, and about $20 million off our Caterpillar loans and leases. That means by the end of 2019, we expect to have about $260 million in outstanding in debt obligations, $200 on the line and $60 owed under Cat loans, which is five-year money.
That'll leave us, on the line, we'll have a $400 million undrawn capacity at year-end, with another $200 million on the accordion, should we so choose to exercise that. If you look forward into 2020, one of the things we intend to do as part of the Fekola mine expansion is to fund part of the fleet expansion with a Caterpillar loan. Only a portion of it, though, about $40 million we think we'll put towards that fleet cost in 2020.
The total fleet cost, somewhere around, $80 million, $86 million, of which we incurred about $36 million or $37 million up to the 2019 year-end, with the balance in 2020. Some other matters, I guess, just to look forward, as we go through the other presentations, certainly on the operations side, you'll hear some of the plans, how they see the operating models unwind and roll out in 2020 and some of the activities we'll be doing. J ust to remind you, the budgets will be out, budget guidance will be given somewhere mid-January, just as it always is. Those budgets haven't been formally approved and put out in press releases, but that'll happen sometime early 2020.
I think what you will see is production-wise, we think in terms of production guidance, the budgets we think will be close, pretty much on what we've guided so far in our growth chart, and that's what Bill's going to talk to in a little bit. Somewhere around that million ounces. Fekola will be somewhere in the 600,000 oz part of that. We were not going to give any cost guidance for 2020 yet, Fekola is going to become a much bigger part of our production in 2020, 60% of the 1 million ounces. With Fekola's cost profile and the expansion that's being implemented right now and will be fully online by the end of Q3, in terms of mill expansion and earlier than that in terms of expanded fleet, we should see cost improvements.
Overall, we think we're going to have some pretty exciting comparative cash costs and all-in sustaining costs to tell you about in early January. Some of the costs you will see at Fekola next year, the expansion will be there. Obviously, we've talked about that a bit in the last few releases. There's approximately $95 million to come in capital for that expansion in 2020. We've already spent some of it this year. Like I say, there'll be about $40 million of the fleet component of that financed with Caterpillar loans. Then we've also got stripping campaigns that will continue at Fekola phases VI and VII. Otjikoto, you're going to hear about today about some of the planned underground activity there and the ongoing stripping at Wolfshag and Otjikoto.
Also, I think a little bit about the next phase of the solar expansion, the power line. Masbate is business as usual. In 2020, we actually did the mill expansion over a year ago and got it running fully online. We'll see the benefit of that 8 million ton capacity from Masbate for the full year. Overall, when you take that sort of cost profile into account, especially with the contribution of Fekola, we expect to see cash flows from operations increase from where we project them this year. What are we going to do with that cash next year? One of the things we intend to do is keep paying down on the line.
Based on the current gold prices, it's our expectation that we'll have paid down the revolver by sometime by the end of Q3 next year. Clive, of course, mentioned Gramalote. You'll hear a bit more about that, we will have up to $40 million in the budget capital. There'll be a budget agreed with Anglo, we expect somewhere around or up to $40 million for 2020. Our share of that will be $14 million upfront payment, where we fund the first 14 and then we'll share the balance.
Once we've funded $13.9 million or $14 million on Gramalote, we'll have earned back to 50/50 joint venture interest and with the right to be manager, and subsequent to us funding that $14 million, then we'll split the balance of the cost 50/50 with them as we go forward. I think that's all I wanted to comment on the finances here and just give you a high level overview of where it's going next year. Like I say, full budget guidance, we expect to come out sometime mid-January. With that, I'll hand it over to Bill.
Good afternoon. For those that don't know me, I'm Bill Lytle. I'm the Senior Vice President of Operations. I guess I wanted to start out, this is a bit unusual for me. Normally, when you meet with me, when we see, I'm talking about the operations, I'm telling you about each individual site, about CSR, about HSE. All those people are here today. Someone actually pointed out when they came in today that really the reason they're here is to talk to the people that are at the face. There will be some people not speaking today that are here today that you may want to grab.
I just wanted to do some real quick introductions before I get going on any of the slides. I wanted to start with someone that actually doesn't get a lot of face time within the company, although he's a Senior VP. Dennis Stansbury is here. Dennis Stansbury is our Senior VP of Acquisitions and Project Development. Anything that happens really prior to feasibility is all Dennis. When we're talking about Gramalote, we're talking about Anaconda, those are things that Dennis has taken up to this point. Then coming across this side, you got Randy Reichert. Where's Randy at?
Randy in the back over there. Randy used to be the manager at Fekola, the General Manager of Fekola, a long time B2 employee. I think people probably remember him from Russia when he was with Bema. Randy has been promoted to VP now, VP of Operations, so he's in the corporate office overseeing all three operations. The reason that he has Masbate in his profile is that Dale Craig, our VP of Operations, is actually going to Gramalote. He will be the Country Manager as we develop that project. John Rajala is here. John Rajala is our VP of Metallurgy.
I think everyone's aware of how well our facilities operate. John is a very strong part of that. Peter Montano, who's the Director of Engineering, is also here today. ESG, you're going to meet all of them today, so I'm just going to quickly go through. You've got Ken Jones, Darren Parry, and Liane Kelly. They'll all be speaking on ESG, on HSE, and social issues. On the Fekola side, of course, you'll hear from Mohamed Diarra, who's the Country Manager, and Ray Mead, who's the GM. Remember, Ray Mead used to be at Masbate. He's now moved across from Fekola.
We've also got Vic King here. Vic King is our Vice President of West Africa. Masbate, we've got Cris Acosta and Dan Moore. Cris is Country Manager. Dan is the General Manager on site. Dan was about three years. Then we've got Gloria Climaco here, who's the Chairman of our local affiliate there. In Namibia, you've got Mark Dawe, who's the Managing Director, and who used to be responsible really for everything, and he still kind of is responsible for everything, but he kind of has shifted his focus a little bit, and we brought a General Manager on, Eric Barnard, and he'll be speaking here for the first time on all the issues at Otjikoto.
When you see these guys, those are the guys that have all the answers. All right, let me go back one. This slide, I don't want to spend too much time on it because Mike kind of covered everything that I would have said on this slide. What I really want to say is that we're deep into Q4 now. There's no surprises as far as we can tell. When Mike says that we think we're going to hit guidance, we're very confident in these numbers. On 2020, as Mike said, we haven't put out our budget numbers yet. What we will say is that what we're projecting, our estimates in the deck, we feel very confident in. Obviously, that hinges on the fact that we get Fekola online.
We will start the underground at Otjikoto next year, and that'll be talked about during the Otjikoto presentation. Okay, this is where it gets interesting for me. Clive said when he was out on the road, there was a lot of people saying, "Okay, you guys have done all these great things and you've built this amazing company, but now what's going to happen in this couple of years, you're going to fall off a cliff. You've got no production." I don't know where that information is coming from. Certainly in our estimations, in our life of mine, we looked out five years, and we see that we've got a very steady five years of 950,000 oz a year plus, assuming that we get Fekola and the Otjikoto underground, and our all-in sustaining costs are really quite competitive.
We don't want to project even further than that, what we can say is that over the next five years, we feel like we're in very good shape, and we're in a position that'll give us time to develop more projects. As Clive already alluded to, we believe that our projects are actually going to come from internal growth, organic growth. He's talked a little bit about Gramalote, now you've got to let me do some hand-waving here, right? We're thinking forward now. Allow me to do some hand-waving. Let's say the PEA comes out, which is going to come out in Q1 of next year, positive. That then turns our full feasibility team loose, and they're ready to go. We're actually working on it already.
We've already discussed with AGA that we would have a feasibility done by the end of next year. If, in fact, that the feasibility shores up what the PEA says, that would turn our construction team loose in Q1 of 2021. Once again, doing some grand hand-waving, typically it takes us kind of that 24-30 months to build a project. You could certainly see within five years Gramalote coming online. Okay, what does that mean, once again, for the rest of our growth? I know that Tom's going to spend a lot of time talking about some of the positive results in Mali.
We're very excited about this project. So much so, once again, if you get a chance, talk to Dennis. We've already spent a lot of time doing some front-end engineering. I'm sure everyone's aware there's a resource there already over 800,000 oz. When we've been out on the road, we've talked a lot about this. Is there a project, a satellite project, where you could do a very simple mine and mill and produce 100,000 oz a year? Is there a project there? It turned out that the theory always was that there was a feeder zone somewhere below that, there's got to be a hard rock source. If we could find the hard rock source, what would that mean?
We started looking at, would we do some sort of combination of saprolite, hard rock? Would we truck it if we found a high-grade pocket? Now I believe quite strongly that we're onto something significant, we've actually talked about it internally that we just need to step back as engineers and say, "Wait a minute." Once again, are we designing the right plant? Are we designing the right size? We absolutely believe there's a potential for a project there.
We're just waiting for the exploration to catch up a little bit. As we work on Gramalote, they will continue to develop Anaconda. You can imagine in a year or two when they're ready to go, our engineering team will absolutely be ready to come off of Gramalote and right onto Anaconda if there's a project there. You can imagine a nice sequence where we go right from the Fekola expansion, part of the team working on the Otjikoto underground, into Gramalote, into Anaconda.
Once again, it's all hand-waving because there's not even a PEA done there, but internally, that's what we're thinking about as far as development. This is my last slide here. Just a couple of catalysts. This is right out of the deck here. You will see a new mineral resource in Q4 this year, and then an updated mine plan for Fekola in Q1 2020.
The infill drilling at Gramalote, and then a PEA in Q1 of 2020, feasibility done by the end of next year. We'll talk a lot today about the Otjikoto underground. This will be the first time that we have publicly discussed the Otjikoto underground, and we haven't even officially brought it to Board yet. Once again, it doesn't have Board approval, but we believe very strongly that that's the way we're going to go, and so we're going to talk a little bit about that. With that, I'll turn it over to you, Tom.
Thank you, Bill. Before I get going on exploration, I just want to introduce, well, you probably already know him, but Brian Scott and Hugh McKinnon are VPs of Exploration and Geology, who are here today to answer questions for you guys if you have any questions for them. They're a big part of the success we've had over the years. The first slide here shows a map of where we're involved. We're doing exploration around all the mine sites, and we have several early-stage exploration projects in numerous spots around the world. Finland and Botswana are amongst some that are shown on the map here. Our exploration is drill heavy, as it's always been.
You don't make discoveries without doing a lot of drilling. As of the end of October, we had over 150,000 m of drilling done. The bulk of that's in West Africa, obviously around Fekola, but over 1,500 holes drilled as of end of October. Exploration budget for the year distributed around the world has been around $50 million. Our exploration plans for next year, although it has not been approved by the Board yet, will be in the same order of magnitude. I'm not going to talk too much on some of the projects here, because Andy Brown, our Exploration Manager for Africa, is going to talk about Fekola and Otjikoto later.
I will give some of the notes on Fekola. Fekola exploration focus this year, the main focus for the first half of the year was to infill drill the resource to the PEA pit. Once that was completed, we shifted the drilling on to some of our regional targets, the main one being looking at saprolite under Anaconda or the Anaconda area in general, and then Mamba more specifically as we made a discovery later in the year. Plans for the Fekola area next year will be continuing to drill further north on Fekola. Yes, it is still open, unbelievably, but it still is wide open to north.
We'll continue looking at that to the north and some of the targets in and around Fekola, and then we'll try and get to Mamba to some point of a resource. It really depends on where the drilling goes and how big it gets. As Bill said earlier, it's a very significant project for us now in terms of exploration, and we'll be continuing that. We'll also be drilling the saprolite resources still open to the north along the Atar trend, and we'll continue doing saprolite exploration there. We'll also be doing more drilling to find other sulfide sources that are sitting underneath the saprolite.
On to Masbate . Exploration Masbate was focused mainly on doing infill drilling of some of the resources this year. That's going to continue next year as we look at higher gold prices. Higher gold prices, it looks like some of the Masbate pits can get deeper. Our focus next year's exploration is going to be on drilling the deeper portion or the side portions of some of these pits to see how to basically take that inferred portion, bring it in indicated, and then we'll know how big our pits can get in Masbate .
There is room for growth, sort of exploration by gold price for Masbate, I guess, for next year. On to Namibia. We did a fair bit of exploration at Otjikoto going down a plunge on Wolfshag to understand where Wolfshag is going for future underground. We also spent a fair bit of drilling meters on some adjacent structures that Andy will talk about. Going forward in the future there, the exploration will continue along the same lines. We've also done a fair bit of drilling on Ondundu, which is an early-stage exploration project to the south. Into Gramalote. As a lot of people have said, we've started our work on Gramalote.
We plan to drill by May about 47,000 m of drilling, mainly diamond drilling on Gramalote Ridge infill drilling. We'll do another 2,700 m of RC drilling on the satellite portion of Trinidad to bring that to a better understanding. We'll do a little bit of deeper drilling on Trinidad to get a geological understanding of the Trinidad zone itself. This is to be completed in May, and then within a couple of months of that, we should have a resource done, to then plant that into the engineer's hands and continue on with the PEA, which is scheduled later in the year. Sorry, feasibility scheduled later in the year, not PEA, excuse me. Burkina Faso.
Exploration in Burkina Faso was focused around Kiaka and some targets between Kiaka and Toega. The plan in 2020 is we've got a little bit of drilling planned for earlier in the year, and then we're going to have to refocus on what we're going to do with Kiaka. Now, grassroots exploration. A lot of people have asked me where we're doing our grassroots exploration, what we're doing in grassroots exploration. It's one of those little things you like to do as an exploration geologist, you keep your ideas to yourself. This is one of those cases.
We will be continuing a fairly aggressive grassroots exploration program next year. Part of that is going to be joint ventures with junior companies and evaluating some junior companies or mid-size companies on early-stage projects they may have that are available or they need funding on. In addition to that, there's going to be a significant amount of the budget towards projects we've generated ourselves. My view is, and it's being shared more and more, is that with a lack of funding with exploration out there in the last few years, the juniors haven't generated a lot of targets.
The second part of that is you guys do such a good job identifying these early-stage projects that there's not a lot of value there left in it for companies like ours when we're looking at them. We came to the conclusion a year or two years ago that it was time to start generating our own targets, what we did, people like me very early in our career doing early-stage exploration on company-driven targets. That will be how our grassroots is going to be done going forward. I hope we'll continue to have a good size budget towards that. I hand it over to you, Neil. Thank you.
Thanks very much, Tom. It's a pleasure to be with you. Again, thanks everyone for coming out today. I'm going to just do a quick high-level snapshot here of our government relations at the three countries where we mine as well as Colombia. In the photo, just to start with Mali, Mohamed Diarra, who will speak later, our Country Manager. This is greeting the President of Mali, who was in Fekola for the mine opening. Mohamed is part of a very strong senior management team that we have in Mali with very good networks into the national government, including the mining ministry and other key offices in the country.
He's also a former advisor in the Ministry of Mines and worked in the Mali private sector. This is the quality of people that we have and the quality of people that we're attracting. Just over to the next slide. Just at a very high level, it's important to note the good relations that Canada enjoys with Mali. I came from government, of course, and for me, I'm very conscious of these relationships. Now that I'm working in the private sector, as a backdrop, how important it is to have good level relations with the country between the governments, which sets the stage for private investment and assists the success of companies like B2Gold.
In the case of Mali, since 1960, we've been a partner of them with development assistance. You'll see $136 million in development assistance last year from Canada to Mali for various projects, which puts us as one of the top donors to that country. Many people in Mali over the years have studied in Canada, and we've got a considerable community of Malians living in Canada. In Quebec, for example, you see a lot of Mali students throughout the university and CEGEP system. These are important links that are established over time, of course, and work to Canada's benefit in that country.
On the mining side, Fekola is one of the largest of the five Canadian mines, and the Canadian Embassy puts the value of Canadian mining investment now over $3 billion. We are a major player in mining sector, preferably gold sector. In Mali, there are some 15 juniors and gold producers now in the country. Turning to the Philippines, of course, a country close to my heart. Again, a very strong economy. What's remarkable with the Philippines now is they're running seven straight years of growth in excess of 5%.
We're working in a very buoyant economy, one with modest inflation but with steady growth, along with China, the two fastest-growing economies in Asia. The government's priming the economy with its Build, Build program. This has been a focus of President Duterte in order to create jobs and economic activity and deal with major infrastructure challenges in the country, as anyone who's spent time in Manila will appreciate the congestion in terms of traffic and et c. The third bullet just describes some of the President's agenda. This is for the second half of his six-year term.
He's got three years left. A particular focus on pro-poor initiatives, bringing people out of poverty. Some significant gains have been made in the Philippines, where people have moved up on the economic scale and moved out of poverty in the last several years. The next slide on the government relations side, we again have a very strong executive team, as I see across all the mining operations. In the case of the Philippines, led by Cris Acosta, Dan Moore, Gloria Climaco, who are with us today and who've made a very important contribution in respective keeping very good relations at the national level, the local level, the regional level, and into the Philippines Congress.
We also want to highlight the DENR Secretary, Roy Cimatu. This is like the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources of the Philippines, who's visited our mine and was very supportive of what we're doing, including very positive comments on the environmental side, mine rehabilitation, for example. In a complex mining environment, B2Gold stands out as a model for responsible investment. President Duterte has said specifically, publicly, that Canada and Australia are the models that he most respects for responsible mining and responsible mining investment in the Philippines. That's something that for us, of course, is of significance.
The next slide, just on the higher-level relationship. As people who travel around Canada will appreciate, the Filipino community in this country is growing and growing rapidly. They're the fastest growing community in Canada, and they also have the lowest unemployment rate in Canada. Among immigrant communities, they've adapted the best to our country and have managed to integrate very well. I'll just say a couple words on trade and investment. Significant trade figures with the Philippines, and the investment number is also impressive, CAD 2.1 billion in Canadian investment, and that includes the Masbate operation.
We've also got major investments in insurance, telecoms, and IT. We're very well and very prominent in that country. I'll just turn to Namibia. On the government relations side, President Geingob last week was reelected as President with the majority support, free and fair elections. In international context, what's really nice to see was a lack of violence, a lack of tension in those elections, that Namibians voted peacefully and reelected the president for another term. The President's very appreciative of B2Gold's investment. We met him in New York recently, and he spoke about having visited the mine region and feeling the impact of what B2Gold has done in terms of job creation, in terms of generating more housing opportunities for people in one of the more depressed regions of the country.
He does genuinely appreciate our investment and very open to foreign investment. In terms of our executive team, as is mentioned, Mark Dawe, country manager and managing director, leads a very seasoned team and one that has very good networks into the government and also works closely with the Namibian Chamber. This is important because the Chamber, as the lead organization, the Chamber of Mines, addresses issues with the government of Namibia, including tax proposals as they emerge. Nice photo there. This is a NGO project that supports young children. This is funded by B2Gold in Namibia. It is called Lifeline Childline.
Just a quick word on Canada-Namibia relations. Obviously, not a relationship that people may be generally conscious of, we do have a very strong reputation, B2Gold, as an investor. As a Canadian investor, we benefit from a very warm sentiment towards Canada, which has been in place for many years. If you go back to the 1970s, particularly 1980s, under Prime Ministers Trudeau and Mulroney, the Canadian government was very engaged in supporting the independence process in Namibia leading up to full independence in 1990.
That hasn't been forgotten because the same forces that we supported at that time in terms of trying to develop a plan towards independence, Canada was part of the contact group. Those same individuals are now the leaders of Namibia, including President Geingob, of course. They do speak very fondly of that, and they appreciate the support of Canada. Today, of course, B2Gold is a very important player. The last bullet is significant, and I was told this by the Canadian High Commissioner in South Africa, that in fact, our direct investment in Namibia is greater than in South Africa, and that's primarily because of mining investments.
We are a very important player in that economy. Finally, a quick look at Colombia. Again, a robust economic growth, about 3% growth this year, 3% inflation. The government of President Duque is very interested in foreign investment, including in the mining sector, and they have made overtures internationally, and they're very active at PDAC and around the world to promote investment in the sector. We benefit, of course, from, again, a very strong management team at Gramalote. As Bill has mentioned, Dale Craig will be our Country Manager in Colombia with extensive experience in Peru and Nicaragua previously.
We have strong community support for the project in Gramalote. This is very important in Colombia because of the influence of communities on mining investment and mining decisions. We do benefit from a project in a mining community, and in a department, Antioquia, that has a long tradition of mining. For the final slide, again, just on the high level relationship, I will mention that Colombia has been a key partner of Canada and South America for a number of years. We benefit from the free trade agreement that was signed in 2011, came into force.
We're also negotiating a free trade agreement with what's called the Pacific Alliance grouping, which brings in Colombia, Chile, Mexico, and Peru. Under the free trade agreement, 98% of Canadian goods exported to Colombia are now tariff free. This is an advantage for the investor, but also for Canadian exporters. Our investment in the country is among the highest of any country. It's over CAD 5 billion. We have about CAD 1.7 billion in trade.
Our investment mostly is in mining, energy, financial services. Scotiabank, of course, is one of the leading banks in Colombia. We benefit from a double tax treaty, air transport agreement, and more than 100 companies are represented in Colombia. Overall, a very strong relationship, I think, which sets the stage for the Gramalote project. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Neil. Thanks, gentlemen. At this point, I'd like to open up the floor to questions. If anyone has a question, please wait for the microphone to come over to you for those on the webcast. There's one here, and there is two microphones on either side of the podium. If there are any questions for any of the speakers or any of the topics that were discussed, please.
Just mention there'll be a Q&A session later as well.
Yeah, of course. Q&A sessions will continue throughout the day, and also after the presentations.
Thank you all very much for your presentations. Very helpful. Bill, maybe just a question for you. On the five-year guidance, it's very helpful. I think it's the first time B2Gold has provided that type of guidance. It seems to me that there's certainly upside to that. Is this to be thought of as sort of like a bare minimum? Is the right way to think of it that 2019 is sort of peak year over the next five years, and it will be a little bit lower as a base case over 2021- 2024? Thanks.
Okay. The answer is no, you shouldn't necessarily think of it as a minimum. That's based on our existing life of mine plans. Every year in June, our life of mines are updated, and that's just the 2019 life of mine over the next five years. Yes, there's absolute upside for sure, but there's also some uncertainty in the sense that you've got to develop the Fekola expansion and the underground as well.
Just the second part, is it right to think of it as the average for 2021- 2024 of being 15,000 oz- 25,000 oz less than 2022? Is there a fair bit of variability in there?
There's a fair bit of variability in that, for sure.
Okay. Thank you.
If I could just add a little bit to that. You're right, we haven't typically guided for that many years out, but don't forget, we've been in this growth profile for 10 years. We're getting to the point now we're pretty steady state with the three core assets, albeit expanding Fekola here pretty rapidly.
This is partly our response to, because of the expansion, we did have some feedback with people saying, "Okay, so you got three great years in front of you with Fekola, 600,000 oz, what happens after that?" Do you drop dramatically in gold production? That's why we wanted to get out that based on all of our current life of mine projections, we see ourselves for having this very solid five years at around 1 million ounces of gold a year. That's by no means the end of it.
In fact, the mine life, if you look at Masbate, it's a minimum of eight years, and then many years of processing tailings and things after. Very solid mine life, very solid long 10-year mine life at Fekola, and we're looking at around six, seven years at Otjikoto as we go, expect to transition into underground there as well. The other thing I think it's really important to urge people to remember is that if you go back to one of the slides I used earlier, the growth profile, look at what we've done in 10 years from zero gold production to 1 million ounces a year.
Given our extraordinarily successful exploration team, our great acquisitions team, and our very strong balance sheet and cash position, you don't have to really step outside the box too much to imagine that this group is going to continue to grow the company. We're fortunate because in the pipeline, as we said, we've got two projects that could be very near term impact players, and that would be the expansion of Fekola3, the expansion of Fekola, the Gramalote project, and also the Anaconda Area.
I find it really hard to believe that with everything we're doing and the way we do things, that we're not going to continue to grow the company. That's where we wanted to make sure people understand what we're trying to do here. After all these years of growth, it would be a bit unlike me and the whole group to suddenly stop growing the company. We have the benefit over many companies of being able to, we think, grow from existing assets. That's a real bonus.
Question from Abhi Sood, Scotiabank.
Thanks again for providing the five-year guidance. Gives us a lot of confidence in what to look for in the next couple of years. Just looking at 2020, obviously, you guys had some great success in terms of Fekola, in terms of exploration and all that. That's fine. We're going to see the expansion. You guys have finished the pit pushback, I believe, for phase IV. We saw that when we were there at site. High grades were expected to come in, but since the mill has been doing well and the gold price, you guys have been running in low grade stockpiles. When do we start seeing that high grade kick in? Are you looking for to kind of coincide with expansion?
I would say there's going to be a Fekola presentation. Let's save it for that, because certainly we go through all the phasing of the pits for 2020 at Fekola.
Okay. I guess I'll continue, just wanted to ask some more questions on Masbate then. Masbate, again, Montana vein kicked in as well in 2019. Is that going to have contribution in 2020? Is there additional permits required there as well?
I would say, once again, let's wait till Masbate. The answer is, we will be mining in Masbate or in Montana in 2020 for sure.
Okay. I'll leave my questions then for-
All right.
...when we get there.
Yeah. We'll start. Okay.
It looks like Don DeMarco from National Bank.
Thank you, gentlemen. You mentioned that this sequencing that you had in mind, although it's very preliminary at this point, would be to, after the Fekola Expansion, move to Gramalote and then maybe Anaconda after that. Can you give us, while preliminary, any kind of flavor for what the CapEx might be at Gramalote, in orders of magnitude or something like that?
Well, some of the previous work done by AGA and some work from our own modeling work was looking at somewhere around $800 million-$900 million potential cap cost, including around close to $200 million for a fleet as part of that. That's the concept of if the PEA can be out in January, and then subsequent to that, the infill drilling and the final feasibility by the end of the year. Next year, if it continues to hold true to some of the economics that we've been seeing, much better economics, you might be looking at producing around 450,000 oz a year or something like that, for a small plus 10-year mine life.
We'll be able to give you much more detail in January when we come up with a preliminary economic assessment. That's had a lot of work done recently with Dennis and the team and with AGA on updating mining costs and all those things. We'll have a really good, I think, and a very advanced PEA. The only reason it's a PEA is because there's a significant amount of resource that's in the inferred category. It's actually very advanced in terms of metallurgy, engineering, permitting, social programs.
This is why this thing can kick off really quickly if the feasibility study is positive, and which we frankly fully expect. Infill drilling is infill drilling. There's always some risk involved, but this is a fairly homogeneous ore body, the geologists tell me, so we're not expecting surprises there. We'll know soon. We'll have much more to tell you in January.
We'll look forward to that then. The $800 million- $900 million CapEx historical figure is for the total life of mine CapEx, including sustaining CapEx and all that?
Yeah, I'm not going to get too far into that right now. I think you're best to wait till January to put it in your model because you'll have a lot more information of how we see it then. We haven't seen a dramatic Dennis has been redoing, and AGA, the capital cost numbers, we haven't seen a dramatic increase over that. The economics, they look good. Let's find out. Let's prove it out, and that's mainly the function of infill drilling. January, you'll have lots of stuff to build a model of.
Thank you.
Thanks, Don.
I believe that answers it for me. Okay, is there a question from Chris?
Pardon me? Chris Thompson from PI Securities .
Two more questions at the end.
Thanks. Just a quick question on the dividend. How should we be looking at the dividend moving forward? Obviously, a lot of growth, a lot of good things, but maybe just talk to what sort of positioning, how would you position the dividend on a forward-looking basis?
I guess maybe I'll go first. It's a reasonable level dividend, especially, I think, as a starting position. It's probably in the mid of the pack with gold producers. A few of them, like Agnico, have increased them just recently. I think it's a reflection of the fact that we've always had this objective. As I said, if you can be successful in our business and generate lots of cash flow, you take some of it and continue to grow your business, which I think our shareholders very much want us to do, and take some of it and reward the shareholders with a dividend.
Looking forward, we'd like to see that dividend increase over time. Of course, part of the issue there is what are you doing with your cash flow? What are you building at the time? Are you expanding a mine, et c. Clearly, we have an avenue to a lot of additional capability to fund through very low-cost debt. We have the facility in place. It's always a balancing act going forward. We didn't want to jump on it too hard and start a dividend that you have issues continuing in the future.
You never want to do that. We started at what I think is a reasonable level. It's been very well received by generalist funds and by the gold funds as well. Our vision and our hope is to grow the dividend. Obviously, it's going to be a balancing act because you're looking at things like Gramalote and Anaconda and things like that. It doesn't mean we can't increase the dividend as we grow the company. That is our goal. That fair to say, Chris?
Yeah. Well, it's too late now, I guess.
Yeah. You don't agree, but.
All right, thanks.
Well said.
Thank you.
If there's no further questions, with that, we'll move on to our next panel.
We have one more, but then we have to do a couple.
Oh, sorry. Geordie? That's Geordie Mark from Haywood Securities.
Geordie Mark from-
Use the mic.
He'll defer his question till later. That concludes the first panel on your schedule. Everybody will be available for questions throughout the afternoon and, of course, later on after the formal session has ended. At this time, we'd like to bring up our colleagues from Fekola, and that includes Mohamed Diarra, who is the Country Manager, Ray Mead, who's the Mine Manager, and Andy Brown, who is the Exploration Manager for Africa. They'll be updating you on a little bit more detail that the initial panel went through. We're starting with Mohamed Diarra, Country Manager.
Good afternoon. My name is Mohamed Diarra. I'm the country manager for B2Gold Mali. Today I'm just going to take you to just a general presentation about Mali operations and tell you about the general overview on Mali. Give you a political aspect of Mali at the moment, security, and also a lot of people have questions about the mining code, so I'll try to touch on that a bit. This is just a slide to talk to you about where Mali is generally located. This is in the west coast of Africa. You'll have seven borders. The Fekola project is situated at the west side of Mali, it's by the border of Senegal.
It's a big country. It's got about 1.2 million square Kilometres. You'll have lots of All the traffic coming through Mali comes through, because it's an inland lock country, comes from Senegal or Guinea. We have most of our Guinea or Ivory Coast, I'm sorry. Most of our traffic for Fekola comes from Senegal. As of today, we're using most of the, for the traffic, going to Mali. We have an airstrip on site, so we're using the airstrip as a privileged mean of transportation to get to Fekola. There's a lot to say about the political overview, but I'm trying to summarize this in just a few points. We have a good stability as far as government goes at the moment.
The President elected is Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta. This is his second mandate, so he's just been reelected and is going to run until 2023. Earlier this year. This is a picture of last year with Clive and the President for the opening of the mine. The second picture is the picture of Clive with the Minister of Mines who was actually on site to open the New Fadougou. We'll talk about Fadougou a little bit after that. The thing, the main questions that lots of you guys may have is related to the mining code. Fekola has elected to go on the 2012 mining code. We've been saying that over the past few years.
Just this year we had a proposed decree by the Ministry of Mines to go to a newer mining code. That mining code is actually an attempt to regulate a little bit of the different disparities that we have between the 1999 mining code, the 2000, the 1999, and the 2012 mining code, and we also have a 1991 mining code. Since we decided to go on the 2012 mining code, we're closer in terms of what's in the new mining code. We're closer to what the government has expected. B2Gold has been a really good, let's say, good student in bracket saying that government is really praising our approach, saying that we're responsible and the way we've been looking at making things move forward.
The new mining code doesn't really affect any of our activities. We've been under the stability clause, and we think that we've discussed with the minister. She's already confirmed to us that there's no impact whatsoever on what we're doing at the moment. This is just to give you an idea of what's going on. We have a very good relationship with the Ministry of Mines, Ministry of Finance, and the Prime Minister's office. As far as security, I'm just trying to guess what you guys may have as questions. What's in mind when you say Mali today?
After the mining code, which was big on people's minds, got security aspect as well. Just to let you know that where we're situated at the moment, as far as the west part of the country, we never had any big incident. Never had any incident whatsoever. As far as security, we never had any terrorist attack, no foreign expats kidnapping, anything like that. We're still being very cautious on what we're doing. We have different ways of looking at security.
You have the government approach to it, and then you have the international forces, and then you have what we do in Mali. Government is very aware of what's going on, and they're really trying to do lots of efforts to secure all the companies and foreign investments. We've been having lots of discussion with them, good relationship with the Ministry of Security. When it comes to local security, when the region of [Riyal] we have in the region of Kayes, we have a good relationship with the governor and all the gendarmes and security out there.
B2Gold is also trying to make as much as possible to secure all these employees. As far as security today, we are aware of security threats, but we're making all the efforts to make sure that all our personnels, Malians and expatriates, are all secured on site and in Bamako. Going back to New Fadougou, we have a couple of initiative when it comes to community, social relations. New Fadougou was a very big project for us over the past two months. We just completed it earlier in 2018. We were able to move about 913 household to a new area with all the new facilities.
When you have new health system, what you call the CSCOM, it's like a health clinic that's kind of out there to help all the villagers to respond to any health issues and also maternity issues. We've been able to build a school, a mosque. We had public lighting, and we also have water holes and things like that to make sure that the community gets what's needed in the community. Just to let you know, the project was a very dynamic project, so we had to discuss with all the villagers to make sure that what they wanted and what was needed was actually properly addressed, and nothing was done in a way that we imposed anything to anybody.
It was more like it was a consensual discussion and agreement, so we were able to move to a new area. That was the old Fadougou, and this is the New Fadougou, so it was quite a change on that. A couple of other initiative from B2Gold. We have a partnership with UNICEF. It's a livelihood project. We're trying to do a three-year partnership to develop a partnership with UNICEF Canada and provide a better future for children. This project will actually target in the artisanal community. The children that are being used to do some small-scale mining, we're trying to get them to get more education and those type of things.
A lot of those issues are related to lack of education and those type of things. We believe that if we can contribute to education very early on, we can probably change the future of those children. Last but not least, we've also initiated a signatory project. Also, this is going to be a project that we'll try to do over five years. This is actually something what we wanna do a sustainable development project, not wait until the end of the mine, but start rather early and do some kind of complex agricultural project where we can have training for the guys, for people with no possibility or opportunities to learn a trade while mining in Fekola.
Once they, instead of having to do artisanal mining, they have an opportunity to do agriculture, and also we'll look at livestock and do a little bit of processing meats and different things like that. Right now it's in the project. We're doing the terms of references, but probably by next year, the project will probably start next year. That's basically what I wanted to say. Thank you for attention.
Thank you, Mo. We'll have a Q&A session directly after the rest of the Fekola presentation. For now, I'd like to introduce Ray Mead, who is the General Manager of Fekola, formerly General Manager of Masbate. Some of you may know Ray, just now he's wearing a different hat.
Thanks, Ian. I've been at Fekola now for about five months, really just getting my feet under the desk. Hoping to continue on, obviously, the good work done by Randy and his team initially with the startup operation. I'll run you through basically where we are at this stage. This is a timeline slide, and I think one of the things to take out of this, and it's been a constant message from Clive and the rest of the executive group, is that B2Gold don't sit still. From acquisition of the project in 2014 through to where we are now in 2019, there's been quite a few quantum shifts in the way the project's been looked at.
Even during initial construction, decisions were made to increase the capacity of the mill from 4 million ton- 5 million ton per annum, as we came to understand the project more. Through commissioning in 2017, three months ahead of our construction schedule. Straight into achieving commercial production before the end of that year. In 2018, certainly after the good work done by the exploration group, an increased mineral resource was posted. Again, the group looked at what we had ahead of us then, the expansion study was approved towards the end of 2019 in October.
This is where we are now from a PEA posted in March of 2019 on the new resource model, which was put out in 2018. We came up with an 11-year mine life at an optimized mining rate of 74.4 million tons per annum. That'll be a peak rate that includes all pre-stripping as we move through the 10 stages of mining. The mill, similarly, will see an expansion or an increase in throughput, taking it from a nominal 6 million ton per annum which is a rate that it's been able to achieve after commissioning and the like, up to somewhere around 7.5 million tons per annum.
The construction process started on-site in October. Again, you can see quite rapid progress from engineering through to boots on the ground and construction starting to occur. Milling life of 12 years. Again, there's been a bit of a focus on five years. Our first five years on the expanded rate and the increased mining rates puts us at about an average of 550,000 oz per annum, and then average across the life of mine of 400,000 oz.
Overall expected gold production, as we know it now, is about 5 million ounces. Again, from Tom and you'll hear from Andy a bit later on, exploration is still ongoing further to the north. We'll do an updated life of mine out in quarter one 2020. 2019 to date. Just on the left of that slide, there's a small table of details. One of the key takeaways from that, you'll notice the 2019 CapEx has considerably increased from earlier guidance up to $136 million. That just reflects the mill expansion, the mining fleet, new equipment, and also the solar farm.
There's some of this capital in 2019. There's also a carryover into 2020 as we finish off the bulk of these projects. 2020 production at 600,000 oz thereabout, 600,000 oz-620,000 oz. Then the mineral reserve and resource estimates in the bottom corner. Currently, end of third quarter, we're about 7% above where we expected to be from a gold production perspective. That obviously has positive influences on our cash costs and all-in sustaining costs. We expect to finish the year between 445,000 oz-455,000 oz .
It's been fairly evenly spread quarter-by-quarter. We initially thought that we'd have a heavier second half of the year, but just the way we've ramped up the mill throughputs through the earlier part of the year, as we've started to test and look at the engineering that we were doing on construction. It changed the profile a little bit, but not too much out of balance. As I said, we're having a good solid year and expect to finish as guided. That guidance was increased at the end of the third quarter.
Full year, we'll be moving about 40 million tons, 40.5 million tons total movement out of the pits. Waste tons, a bit over 32 million tons of waste. Between 7.9 million tons and 8.2 million tons of ore. The grade range is 1.75- 1.85 and strip ratio 4: 4.1. The mill, again, as mentioned by a couple people, Mike Cinnamond, I think, distinctly. We've increased the milling rate through the year. We are not modifying what we're doing from a mining perspective at the moment. We're actually feeding in some of the lower-grade stockpiles through the year. What you would have noticed is a drop-off in feed grade. With the significant increase in throughput, we've sort of done better than budget.
Recoveries, we've been able to keep them unaffected by the increased throughput. We've had some softer ore blends that we've been able to manage early on. Just the throughput relationship towards the end of the year just to maintain recoveries. This is our 2019 pit. The brown areas are the areas that we're concentrating on this year. Phase IV is our predominant ore source. We're diving down quite deep in Phase IV. Phase V is a large pre-strip area, but is producing some ore as well.
This now differs into the 2020 pit profiles. Again, the brown area is the large pre-strip area. This is one of the main reasons for bringing in the fleet that we've selected into first quarter of 2020. We're bringing in a lot larger mining equipment. There's quite a bit of pre-strip there to do, so we have an opportunity to bring in larger equipment to move the material more efficiently. Phase V continues, and phase IV is also a predominant ore source through the year.
Okay, for next year, this is where we look to be. 65 million tonnes. We don't hit our peak mining rate next year because we stagger the introduction of the new equipment from quarter one, quarter two into quarter three, and we finish new equipment additions by first quarter of 2021. The mill throughput sits about 6.8 million tonnes, slightly less than what the upgraded expansion capacity will be, mainly because we're working in amongst the construction crews, so there's several tie-in requirements through the year.
The expanded plant doesn't become available till the end of Q2 into Q3, so there's impacts on production through the first half of the year. We have, however, managed to come up with a set of production profiles, 600,000 oz, 620,000 oz. Just to show that we like keeping busy, we've also taken on a TSF lift at the same time and decided to do that as a double lift. One of the main reasons for that is we're in a good position in the pit to produce bulk waste, to do a lot of that lift of the TSF. We have an opportunity to get some short hauls out of the pit and to move a lot of the waste into the buttressing of the TSF.
We'll be going up to 185.2 m, which will give us around about three years of TSF capacity, and that'll be finished certainly in the first half of 2020. On the capital front, the construction projects obviously take precedence. They're quite capital heavy in the first half of the year as we round off the mill upgrade, the solar project, the mining fleet, and the TSF raise. As mentioned, the four major projects. The mill expansion is 1.5 million tonne nominal additional capacity. 30 MW of solar, hybrid solar battery power plant being installed.
Mining fleet expansion and the raising of the TSF, as mentioned, for a three-year capacity improvement. We've got the capital cost breakdowns on this slide. $50 million for the mill expansion thereabouts, $38 million for the solar farm, $87 million in mining fleet, of which $40 million of that will be pushed through our cap line facility. On the new equipment specifically, we're currently running 777s and 6020 diggers. We're taking a jump up in size. Now we'll be running 789 haul trucks to move a lot of the waste.
We'll couple them with 6040 front shovels to strip the waste. Along with that obviously comes additional drilling capacity requirements, dozer requirements, and the usual ancillary equipment. It's a steady ramp up through 2020 as equipment arrives. We've already had first equipment starting to arrive on site now, so it'll go through assembly and will be working before end of first quarter in 2020. The mill upgrade is really the major power upgrade is through the ball mill. We're ball mill limited. We run a finer grind at Fekola than we do at some of the other operations to maintain recovery.
The SAG mill has been sized correctly, as I think Clive mentioned right from the beginning. We look at the engineering and try and make sure we have room to move as we develop so the SAG mill doesn't need to be touched. The ball mill structurally doesn't need to be touched, but we just increase power through the motors. The other increase is lime slaking. It's just really a production improvement. Cyclone clusters, additional leach tank to maintain residence time, larger pebble crushers, again, just to handle the higher throughput rates, larger pumps and the like.
Everything to do with mill expansion, all long lead time items have been ordered. Everything is on schedule. The construction crews have been mobilizing to site over the past few months as they've been required. Everything certainly on target, on budget, moving into 2020. The solar power plant, this has been one of Dennis' babies from concept through to where we are now. It's going to take up, occupy an area of about 76 hectares on site to the east of where the current plant sits.
We've already cleared that ground, done all the grubbing. We've had the contractors that are developing the solar farm come to site, looking at what we have on the ground to minimize cut and fill so we can minimize earthworks, and rearrange some of the panel arrays. The orders, the selection of tenders have all been done. We expect quite a heavy ramp-up of activity on the solar farm beginning of 2020, and expect to have solar power capacity by quarter three 2020.
Major impact on our operating costs, minimum 7%, we believe we'll take off the top. The battery backup, and the forecasting processes that have been put into this plant make it capable of being more efficient than a typical solar plant. We should be able to run a lot leaner on our HFO plants while we operate on solar power without risk of blackout or losing power, because we have a significant battery storage. With that, I'll hand you over to Andy.
Thanks, Ray. Andy Brown, African Exploration Manager. He'll take you through the Fekola exploration update. As many of you saw, we put out a press release this morning with some pretty impressive results from both the Fekola infill and the Anaconda area.
Thanks, Ian. Good afternoon, everybody. We'll start with an overview of our projects in West Africa. We're going to focus on Fekola for the most part this afternoon, and our regional projects at Anaconda. We have been active this year in Burkina Faso, some early-stage programs in and around the Kiaka deposit and Toega. Very latest part of this year, we actually initiated a small drill program on our early-stage project in Ghana, indicated by the Bui Belt. With just over 114,000 m drilled in Mali this year, Mali continues to be the focus of our exploration in West Africa.
This is our geological overview slide, any of you that have seen this presentation in the last couple of years, you've seen this slide. I come back to it. It speaks to gold endowment in the region. It's a big part of why we continue to spend so much of our exploration budget in this part of West Africa, and continue, I think, by and large, to get rewarded with good drill results a result of it. Gold endowment in the Proterozoic in West Africa in the order of 10,000 metric tons or 320 some odd million ounces. Our little window of that part of the Paleoproterozoic, the Kéniéba-Baoulé inlier straddling the border between Senegal and Mali, and principally the Senegal-Mali Shear Zone, which you can see running up along the right side of that map in the yellow area.
Know the position of Fekola on the south end, Gounkoto, Yalea, Loulo to the north of us. Again, this is a strong local endowment of gold and a large part of the reason that we continue to explore here. Moving into our properties. You can see in the south, the Medinandi permit, which is where the Fekola Mine is located itself, the outline of the pit in blue there. 75 sq km, this is a large license. Much of it is still relatively unexplored.
If you look at the extent of the Fekola Pit there, and what I would say is relatively untested extent to the north of the pit, you can see just what size that property is. Because we've spent such a great amount of time exploring in and around the Fekola Pit itself, there's still lots of exploration upside on the Medinandi license. To the north, approximately 15 km-20 km, depending on where you are, the Menankoto South permit, which is home to our Anaconda Deposit.
Its sister property to the north, Bantako North, which was recently acquired, adding potential strike length to the known resources at Anaconda. Both of these have been very active this year, much of our exploration is focused on the combined Menankoto and Bantako North permits, as you'll see later on. A recap of our objectives for 2019. We had $20.5 million to spend on exploration this year. The majority of that, I would say, was directed at the Fekola itself, where our objective was to upgrade much of the inferred resources in the Fekola pit to indicated, which we completed. Some of our exploration pushed north of the pit.
We'll talk a bit more about that later, that will continue to be a big focus in 2020. We initiated drilling on the Cardinal structure, which is just west of the Fekola pit. You'll see in the next map I have coming up here. Obviously, we've been very busy at Anaconda, Mamba, Cobra. These are the target areas out in the Menankoto South license that comprise the overall Anaconda resource that we've been talking about the last couple of years.
Elsewhere, our regional programs in south Mali advanced this year. There's still two permits there of interest to us that are still quite early stage. Both are relatively early stage compared to the work we're doing in and around Fekola, but will be the subject of further exploration next year. Coming into a map of the Fekola region. Geology map on the right there. You can see the long linear belt of gray sediments right up the middle there. You can see the outline of the Fekola pit. These gray sediments are the host lithology to the Fekola deposit.
We're showing some of the regional targets on the license. Of more immediate interest to us are the Cardinal and FMZ. You can see just off to the left-hand side of the Fekola pit there. Subject of some of our drilling this year, about 7,500 m completed at Cardinal and FMZ, which stands for Fadougou Main Zone. Some of the conceptual targets that we've been wanting to test in recent years, have only recently got to based on our focus on the Fekola deposit itself. You can see in the north end, something we call Eagle, and then just to the south, something we call Heron.
Late this year, we managed to get some holes into each of these targets and are extremely encouraged by the presence of Fekola type stratigraphy and alteration. You're going to see this become a bit of a focus in the year ahead as we step out and do a lot more regional exploration, looking for the extent of the Fekola shears on north and south of us. Keep in mind that not too far south, along what is arguably the same structure, is the Boto deposit.
Key note about Cardinal and FMZ combined, although these are slightly geologically different in terms of host structures, so the Fekola deposit itself. The drilling we've done to date this year, again, about 7,500 m, has shown us satisfactory continuity, and we think we might have the makings of a small near-surface resource there. That's obviously going to be the subject of further work next year. Moving on to a long section through the Fekola deposit.
As I said, the bulk of our work at Fekola this year, just over 22,000 m, was focused on bringing the inferred portion of the deposit to indicated status. Looking to the north, you can see the reserve pit outlined in green. The area of focus has been north of that or to the right of that line, north to the blue line on the end, which is our 1,400 gold mineral resource pit. That area encompasses most of the 1.37 million ounces of inferred that we had announced at the end of the 2018 drill program. That is now all mostly drilled indicated status, and the resource estimate is underway on that and should be ready shortly.
We did some drilling on the south end. You'll see that little dip in the blue of the PEA pit on the south end, that area we call Fekola South. This is a little bit lower grade than the main mass of the Fekola deposit. We did have some success there, but more importantly, infill drilling is going to allow us to bring some of those ounces up to indicated status as well. Looking at some of the highlights from this year's drilling. Announced earlier this year, if you look at the deepest portions, it'll be hard to see. I'll call them out for you. The very deepest portions of that 1400 pit, FKD413, 3.9 g over almost 60 m. FKD415, 2.98 g over 43.9 m.
They're exceptionally good grade width combinations of the deepest levels of this 1400 pit, so further indication that this system has great legs. About 3,200 m of continuous mineralization end to end and open to the north. Looking north of the pit, off to the right side. You won't be able to make that out. FKD431, 1.4 g over almost 30 m. Good indications that this structure continues to the north, and will certainly be the subject of further drilling in the new year. Moving to the Anaconda region.
Over 45,000 m drilled there this year. That is the combination of some of our reconnaissance auger holes that cover the extent of the new license, Bantako, and any portions of the Menankoto license itself that hadn't been covered. You can see the breakdown, Mamba and the Adder structures, which are part of the greater Anaconda resource that we released a couple of years ago, 767,000 oz of inferred at just over 1 g.
Keeping in mind that that resource, which stops essentially at the property boundary between Menankoto and Bantako. You can see it as the East-West line in orange coloration there, about 1/3 up from the bottom. 4.5 km of mineralization there. We've now added potential for a further 2 km at least. On Adder, that's been drilled out, adding up to 1 km , and on the Mamba structure, up to 600 m. You can see, based on the distribution of drill results, that both of those structures continue to be open to the north. Not shown on the map, the Cobra target, which is further off to the east.
If you recall the presentation from last year, we were looking at conceptual targets down there, looking for the presence of sulfide-type mineralization at depth. Although we did only a small amount of drilling there, we did get some nice proof-of-concept hits, 8 m at 3.6 g and 19 m at 1.3 g. That's something we hope to get back to in the new year and continue on with that hard rock exploration there. Turning to the Mamba in the long section. This has been the big story for us this year. Again, something in the order of 14,000 m of drilling completed. We're looking at a west-looking long section here, and you can see the marked southerly plunge to the mineralization.
Important here, know the saprolite and the sulfide boundary. Fairly deep. This is a composite schematic section. Just to say we're projecting onto a vertical section here, a fairly complicated structure. What is obvious is this pronounced southerly plunge and the good continuity between the high grade and the saprolite, and the sulfide below that transitional boundary. Picking out a couple of the highlights from the saprolite on what would be the north side, BNR003, 2 g over 55 m. If you follow that down plunge, you can see some of the hits we've had recently in the sulfide below that, MSD177, 2.6 g over 35.6 m, and MSD179, 4.9 g over 31 m.
This is beginning to look like what we've been talking about in terms of looking for a Fekola-type target at Anaconda. It's very tempting to say that at this point that the saprolite resource we have is merely the icing on the cake. Still early days and a lot of drilling left to be done to fully understand the structure here. Excuse me. Looking ahead to 2020. Proposed budget, you'll see there, is about $18 million, is yet to be approved. Again, another really strong year for exploration in the Fekola region. Our goals are going to be to push north of Fekola, as discussed, targets like Eagle and Heron to the south. We obviously have additional drilling to do with the Cardinal and FMZ zones. Our goal would be to bring those to the initial resource status.
Plenty of drilling left to infill at Mamba, to, A, understand the main controls on that mineralization and ultimately bring it to an initial resource stage. Anaconda, remaining drilling to do there. Much of the drilling at Anaconda proper, that's the zone just to the south of the Adder structure, where the bulk of the saprolite mineralization is hosted. We've done very little to define an underlying hard rock resource there. That's something we're going to be looking at in 2020. Adder, as mentioned, we've got almost a 1 km strike extent to close off there. That'll also see extensive drilling in the new year. With that, I will move on to the question and answer portion.
Thanks, Andy. Thanks, gentlemen. Great presentations. Are there any questions, I see Geordie in the back, for any of the speakers? Please put your hand up. This is Geordie Mark from Haywood.
Good afternoon, all. Thanks for that presentation. If I can start on Ray. Thanks, mate. On the life-of-mine plan you projected there, and I guess we'll get an update in Q1 next year. What was the cutoff grade used to differentiate between waste and ore there versus what you're doing now, implementing your stockpiling strategy, I guess? I'm just thinking.
Yeah, sorry, Geordie, I'm very new to this. I think the cutoff grade's about 0.46, but I stand to be corrected. Maybe Randy might be able to fill you in on that one.
Yeah, the cutoff grade is still 0.8, and then we do stockpile down to 0.65. We've got a stockpile of that as well.
Okay. Are you using it? Through the mill there?
Processing.
Yeah.
Yeah, for processing right now, we're just using our low-grade stockpile that's averaging between one and 1.1 gram a ton.
Great. Thank you. Maybe one for Andy there. Just on the geology on Mamba and today's results. Instead of just looking at the geochemistry of the gold, any other geological parameters that give you confidence on the continuity going down plunge other than just the geochemistry, just to give us an idea of where you're seeing confidence and what you're looking for in drilling?
Yeah. Mamba is still primarily a structural target. We're seeing some of the same features. I know you've seen both some of the Mamba rocks and Fekola deposit. Structural controls are similar. We're still looking at folds as being a primary control for that plunging-type aspect you see. Fairly convinced there's a structural lineation at play, intersection between high strain zones and the host lithology. Slightly higher sulfide concentrations in the Mamba rocks, which I think you might recall from your last visit. We can back that up with actual structural measurements, and we're using that as a target as we bring it south. That's not just a grade distribution we're chasing there, although it happily seems to be living up to expectations.
Any further questions for the Fekola panel? Oh, sorry. There's Barakat from AM Partners.
Just a quick question on the mill upgrade. How much downtime do you expect, especially as you implement the new cyclone cluster? You need to disconnect some pipes, I'm guessing, so the system may have to stop.
We've got three tie-ins scheduled for 2020. We've actually brought one forward, and we'll be doing one late this year, in the next week or so. Everything's been considered within our 2020 guidance of 6.8 million tons through the mill. We expect a 10-day shutdown and a five-day shutdown to get those tie-ins through.
Okay. Thanks, gentlemen. Next, I'd like to introduce the Masbate team. That is Country Manager, Cris Acosta, and Mine Manager, Dan Moore.
Thank you, Ian. I'll provide a short overview of the Philippines, where the Masbate Gold Project is located. The Philippines is in Southeast Asia. It is an archipelago. It consists of more than 7,100 islands, of which only around 2,000 islands are inhabited. Masbate is located in central Philippines. A bit of history, the Philippines was under Spain for more than 330 years, under the Americans or United States for about 50 years, and it was occupied by Japan for three years. Sometimes Filipinos are called Latinos of Asia or Brown Americans.
The Philippines was granted its independence by the Americans in 1946. It is a republic with three independent branches of government, patterned to that of the United States. The President is elected by popular vote, but he has only one six-year term. The current President will have a term until June 2022. The rest of the officials are also elected by popular vote, but every three years. The Philippines is a populous country. It has a population of 108 million, and with the birth rate that we have, let's say at 2%, we practically produce 2 million Filipino babies every year.
The population density we have is about 356 persons per square kilometer. I think comparing to Namibia, I think Namibia has 2, and Canada has 4. The Philippines is a developing country. It has a GDP per capita of around $3,100. The GDP grew by 6.2% last year, which is quite good. The Masbate Gold Project is located in a coastal town. As such, the fishing industry is an important component of the local economy. We have learned that the fishing industry in Masbate has been in decline since the mid-1980s.
We also recognize that the health of the oceans is key to sustaining the fishing industry. We have worked with local communities to improve the health of the coastline. We have implemented two projects, which I would like to mention to you today. With the help of the local government, we were able to establish a 130-hectare marine protected area. Within that area, we are trying to restore and have started to restore coral reef. We do this by deploying specially constructed reef balls. The reef balls have rough surfaces that are seeded with corals.
The balls also have holes for fishes and waves to flow through. The other project we have is the mangrove reforestation. We have planted more than 1.1 million mangrove propagules covering more than 250 hectares. The mangroves and the coral reefs, they serve as spawning area for fish. They also allow marine ecosystems to develop and grow. During typhoons, they help protect the coastlines from storm surges. They also help reduce erosion. From the community's perspective, they provide opportunities for employment for the residents of the coastal communities.
We are now trying to get more involvement from relevant government agencies and university scientists to help ensure that the initiatives that we have started will not only be maintained, but also even further developed. About a week ago, we were visited by Typhoon Kammuri. The local name is Typhoon Tisoy. It was a large typhoon. It affected at least a third of the country. It hit directly the central Philippines, where Masbate is located. When it passed through Masbate, the eye of the storm was less than 50 mi from the Masbate mine.
It was quite strong. I'm happy to say that there were no casualties at the mine site. There was no damage on the major site facilities. We stopped the mining activities for two days. This is for safety reasons. We also stopped the processing plant operations for less than a day. We have been helping our employees and the residents of the host barangays who were affected by the typhoon. We continue to monitor their needs. We will do our best to help out and then find ways to help them out.
Thank you, Cris. I'd like to introduce Dan Moore, Mine Manager of Masbate.
Thank you, Ian. Thanks, Ian. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll start off with a I guess I'll mention, first of all, I've been at the site about two years, but I've only been GM for the last six months, following Ray. I think it was mentioned earlier that Ray had left for Fekola, and Ray left some very big shoes to fill there, and he's done a wonderful job there. I'm just hoping to carry on that tradition there. Starting with the timeline. Masbate is located on the Masbate Island right at the north end in the Aroroy Gold District. The Aroroy Gold District has a long history going back hundreds of years, and large operations.
Just advance the slide.
Whoop. Yep, sorry about that. Okay. All right. Now I'm on the right slide. It goes back several hundred years, and the large operations go back to well before Second World War, when the U.S. came in, established some more modern operations. Actual modern operations started in 1980 with the Atlas Consolidated came in a mine from 1980- 1994. Fairly conventional operation. They mined surface and underground both. At the time they ceased operation, the property changed hands a few times. Ultimately, this slide is missing a bullet. Ultimately, ending up in the hands of CGA, Central Asia Gold, in 2006. From that, they built the operation in 2007, Ray was actually there for that.
The current configuration was built in 2007, with first gold poured in 2009. That was acquired by B2Gold in 2013. B2 did the first expansion in 2016, increased leach capacity, and that year they were able to establish production well in excess of 200,000 oz a year at 206,000. That was phase I of expansion. 2019, this year early in the year, the construction was conducted last year, but we completed it early this year and taken us up to a capacity of about 8 million tons a year, roughly, through the mill. It's a conventional open-pit mining operation. We have very low mining costs there. They're the lowest mining costs, certainly, of any operation I've been associated with.
Mining rate, we have the capability of moving about 34 million tons a year. To do that, we have four Sandvik top hammer Pantera drill rigs, DP1500s. We've got four excavators in backhoe configuration. Three of them are Komatsu PC2000s. One is a PC1250. Bucket size on those, about 12 cu m or seven for the smaller PC1250. We've got 26 Cat 777 haul trucks in D and E configuration. Got a very good maintenance group out there. You'll see some of the longest component lives you'll see anywhere in the world there.
They do a very good job. Very good mining group. Process plant capacity, as mentioned earlier, is about 8 million tons a year. Very conventional system. CIL, including crushing, two stages of grinding, SAG and ball milling, cyanidation, carbon absorption. It's got an AARL carbon stripping plant, of course, electrowinning and gold smelting. The grinding circuit consists of an 8.5 MW SAG mill, two 3.6 MW ball mills, the most recent one commissioned this year was a 6 MW ball mill. Infrastructure includes a 36 MW power plant. That includes six Wärtsilä generators.
In addition to that, we have full port facilities, an airport, and of course, a camp to support it. You can see the map on the left side of the slide there. It shows the location on Port Barrera . That's at the north end of Masbate Island, and Masbate is pretty centrally located in the Philippines. That protects us from weather. A lot of times, some of the bigger storms, they come in from the east, and so Samar is the island to the east, and a lot of times that takes the brunt of the weather. This time, we got the brunt of it. As Cris mentioned, the typhoon hit us pretty hard, but had very, very little effect on operations.
Fairly devastating to the communities. We are providing a lot of aid for those people and coordinating with all the government jurisdictions to help them as best we can. Okay. We maintain a non-union workforce there, which in the Philippines, it's very unionized, for the most part. We've got 1,900 employees, including about 865 direct employees. Very few expats. We've got about 10 expats on site, including myself. We really maintain good relations with our people. We really strive to do that. We've got an employee engagement committee that was formed when Ray was there, and it's very successful.
The employees are able to raise grievances, concerns, requests directly with management, so they actually meet with me and a group of our managers. The committee is so successful, we actually won a national award this year, and that's across all of the Philippines, not just across mining. We won first place. I've got a good safety record there. We've achieved one year without a lost time as of the middle of last month. Previous record was about three years, we hope to achieve that once again. We've got an environmental compliance certificate in ISO 14001:2015, it was mentioned, I think earlier here, we mined the Main Vein pits this year, that was it. It was confined to those.
We are starting the Montana pit, that will commence in January. We're doing prep work right now, clearing, grubbing, and some grade control drilling. Ball Mill III, also mentioned earlier, that was commissioned early this year. Construction was all completed in 2018. Process plant performance, despite the downtime to commission the plant, remains at 8 million tons a year. We also experienced a failure of a SAG mill motor. We took some time to upgrade to some steel liners, which are quite expensive, and the downtime took a bit of a hit.
They perform very well. Life on these liners is very good. We'll continue to use those. Even including the downtime for those items, we were able to maintain the 8 million tons, or we feel we will by the end of the year. Oxide ore ratios for the year are higher than budgeted. We had sort of a fortuitous circumstance that allowed that to happen. We mined through the end of Main Vein. We mined through a number of dumps that Atlas had established. Atlas mined both surface and underground. We mined through a surface dump that was oxide. A lot of it turned out to be ore.
We mined through a fair number of underground stopes that they had backfilled with oxide material that was waste to them and ore to us. We were budgeted about 10% total material being oxide, and we've encountered about 32%. Recoveries for the year are online, pretty much in line with plan. Feed grade to the mill is about almost 10% higher than plan. That's due to the fact that we had less low grade. We didn't count on encountering this oxide that we found in the dumps. We've got extensive low-grade stockpiles of 30+ million tons, and we had planned to move about half our material to the mill was to be low grade, and in actuality, it was only about 20%.
Our feed grades have been higher. Cash operating costs and all-in sustaining costs remain below budget. As shown on this slide, you'll see gold production, we're about 9%. This is through Q3. By 9%. Cash operating costs, 14% below budget. All-in sustaining costs, 15% below budget. Cash operating costs, $567, and all-in sustaining are at $773 per ounce. Both of those are well below guidance. CapEx for the year is about $38 million budgeted.
That includes capitalized stripping, the last of the mill construction, TSF, tailings impoundment construction, equipment rebuilds, equipment purchases, and then land acquisition. Through the third quarter, about 167,000 oz. For the full year, we're forecasting through the mill right at about 8 million tons, somewhere between 1.05 g and 1.15 g per ton, and a recovery rate of 71%-74%. We're holding our guidance at 200,000 oz-210,000 oz. Waste tons should be around 24 million tons. Total tons should be around 32 million tons.
Guidance for next year. We're holding the same guidance, 200-210. Ore tons milled to be about 8.18 million tons. Without any downtime for commissioning or these other liner changeovers, things like that, we should be able to do that. That'll be the highest grade we've put through the mill there in history. We'll be mining three different phases in Main Vein, so IV, V, and VII. IV and VII are pretty much fresh in oxide ores, while phase V is fresh ore. Montana Pit's been mentioned a number of times now. It's oxide transitional ore, no fresh ore next year.
We'll have 20 million tons of waste and a fair strip ratio next year. It's a bit of an increase because we are stripping the Montana Pit, 6 million tons of ore, including 2 million tons of oxide. Capital expenditures are similar to what we experienced this year, land acquisition, capitalized rebuilds of the mining fleet. We have two big rebuilds for the Wärtsilä generators. I believe they're rebuilt at 96,000 hours. Once again, Montana production is in Q1 of 2020. Prep work includes, I think I mentioned earlier, clearing and grubbing and grade control drilling right now. Blue Quartz is the next pit we'll mine after Montana, so we want to commission that one in 2021. Somewhere around year-end, we plan to do the early works on that. That concludes my presentation. Thank you, everyone.
Thanks, Dan. Are there any questions for either Cris or Dan or any of the other executives, Bill, of course, Clive, and Dale Craig is, the most recent manager of the Masbate mine in terms of the executive. Is it Lawson Winder from Bank of America Merrill Lynch?
Dan, maybe just for you since you just presented. That was great. A few things on the mine plan for 2020 and then life of mine. On 2020, I assume the tons that aren't going to be mined and put through the mill will be made up from the stockpile. Can you give us any guidance on how large the current stockpile is and what the average grade is? That strip ratio is fairly large. What's your current life of mine plan strip ratio for Masbate? Thanks.
Good questions. Current stockpiles, I think on, I'm speaking off the top of my head, I should reference something, but around 32 million tons at an average grade of roughly 0.6 g per ton. I can get back with you. I can confirm those numbers in more exactness. Stripping ratio, I think next year is 4.7 g or so. This year it's about a 2.4 g, it's roughly double.
The Montana Pit, if you go back a ways, we were planning to mine it this year, we've just postponed the stripping, the stripping is higher. Life of mine, I don't have that number off the top of my head, it would be somewhere well below 4.7 g, a bit in excess of the 2.4 g. This year was a bit low just because of the fact we weren't stripping any new pits. Life of mine is probably 3.x somewhere, but I can confirm that and get back with you.
Just maybe on the distribution of that oxide ore, do you expect that all later in the year, or it would be fairly evenly spread throughout the year at two points?
I believe it's relatively evenly spread. I'll have to take a look at it.
Okay. Thank you.
Are there any further questions for the Massoubra team? Okay. With that, on the schedule, for those of you on the webcast, we're going to take about a 20-minute break. That'll bring us back right around 3:30. Please enjoy yourself. There are refreshments in the back, and for those of you in the webcast, we'll be back broadcasting at about 3:30. Thank you. Thanks so far for everybody. Great questions. Great presentations from everyone around and all the countries so far. We'll bring up our team from Namibia, the Otjikoto team, and that consists of Mark Dawe, country manager, Eric Barnard, who is the mine manager, and Andy Brown, who will make a reappearance as head of exploration in Africa.
Good afternoon, everybody. Talking about Namibia, I've spoken many years about it. Most of you have been there before, I'm not going to spend too much time on the country itself. I think it's defined by stability. It's certainly one of the most stable countries in Africa. We call it Africa Light or Africa for Sissies in the common lingo. We have a very strong private sector advocacy, which means that the private sector, the Chambers of Mines, Chambers of Commerce and Industry, various other organizations really have some say over government policy. Where there is policy that is promulgated that is not very sensible often, sometimes, they consult a little too late.
There's always an opportunity to turn it around, as we've done recently through the Chamber of Mines been very successful at that. Namibia has excellent infrastructure, good logistics, an efficient port. In fact, our Namport authorities claim that they are the most efficient port in Africa. It's recently been expanded with a new container terminal, a new oil terminal. I think that a lot of traffic that used to go via South Africa is now going to Walvis Bay as a hub.
We've got a very well-developed mining sector, excuse me, being very close to South Africa. As you know, South Africa is a very strong mining country. A lot of our original equipment that we're using is manufactured there, or we source it from South Africa, so that's very useful. What's very important in our country, especially in that jurisdiction, is a completely independent judiciary, superior to the government. You might have heard recently that we've actually had a couple of ministers put in jail.
The government loses court cases all the time, which is quite unusual in our part of the world. From that point of view, Namibia in Africa is a great place to live, great place to operate, and I think that B2's had a fantastic experience of investment in Namibia. We started gold production at the end of 2014, ahead of schedule, below budget. Almost concurrently, we expanded the plant to 3.1 million tons per annum. That was completed in 2015. As a metallurgical engineer, we've had absolutely amazing gold recovery since the beginning. Close to 99%, consistently 98.5%.
It's virtually unheard of, certainly in my mining career, and we continue with that. The productivity, production, and financial results, the profitability have exceeded expectations every year since inception, 2015- 2019. For five years that we've been operating now, we've exceeded our expectations. The great exciting thing, as was mentioned this morning, is that we have a lot of potential for an underground extension to our deposit, which is being finalized right now. As was mentioned by Cris a little earlier, we have the second lowest population density in the world.
We're actually, Cris, just to correct you, we're on 2.9 now, the 2.9 people per square kilometer. I don't know how you get a 0.9 of a person, it's the second lowest after Mongolia, and third comes Australia. I think Canada's about fifth. The Namibian dollar is pegged to the South African rand, which could be a good thing. It can be a bad thing, too. Obviously, in an exporting environment, we're quite happy with the weak South African rand because we earn U.S. dollars. The South African rand is quite a volatile currency, as you're aware.
Not so sure that pegging it to the South African rand is a good thing for the future. One of the great things, especially one of the interests that I have, is environmental protection. I'm working for a wonderful company that is absolutely dedicated to that, as well as community upliftment. Namibia was the first country in the world to have protection of the environment as part of the constitution, and they uphold that to this day. Really is quite remarkable. We have a very well-defined and developed cadastral, geological cadastral. It was initially set up by the European Union under the SYSMIN funding system, and that forms the basis for a lot of the exploration before the work on the ground gets done.
Everybody goes off to the cadastral and has a look at the geophysical information that's on that. Mining is very important in Namibia. 14% of the GDP, we just got the figures out recently through our consultations with the government, and 63% of foreign exchange earnings. It's incredibly important, by far the largest sector of the economy. That includes zinc refining and diamond cutting and polishing. You might find different statistics in the press or the web about that, but if you include the mining products, so it's the refined products as well as direct mining contribution, it gets up to 14% and 63% of exports.
As you heard from Neil a little earlier, we have a newly elected government last week, literally. Very peaceful demonstrations. President Geingob is back in, and he's very much a friend of mining, very in favor of B2Gold. We certainly are the darlings in Namibia. It always says that I could stand up here and talk about our CSI, we call it corporate social investment as opposed to responsibility initiatives. I could talk forever, and one of the most difficult things was to choose four projects that I could talk very briefly about. Excuse me, flu in my throat.
The corporate social investment activities in Namibia, in fact, throughout the operations of B2Gold, are not optional. It's something we're absolutely expected to do. Giving back is so much fun because honestly, it makes you feel great when you look yourself in the mirror in the morning and you think of what our company has done in our country. We have by far the largest corporate social investment activities in the country, including the other mining houses, including the large corporates, and B2Gold really stands out as exceptional.
As I said, to choose four projects is virtually impossible. I'll just talk very briefly about the one on the left. This is a project called the Development Workshop, which is tackling the informal squatter camp developments that are literally taking over the cities. We only have two cities in the country, but the massive influx, urbanization of people from the rural areas has become a real problem. There's a lot of, let's say, lack of structure, lack of latrines and problems with diseases. We took it upon ourselves to sponsor an organization called DW, Development Workshop. It was initially in Angola and did a fantastic job there, good experience there of semi-formalizing the urbanization and the squatter camps that had developed in Angola.
We set them up through the Namibia Chamber of Environment, which itself, the next project along towards the right is a B2Gold initiative. We set up a Namibian Chamber of Environment. Now we have a social pillar of the Namibian Chamber of Environment. This is the key project of that social pillar. We're providing affordable properties, not houses, affordable properties that are semi-serviced with sewage and partially electricity, roads, and that sort of thing in the urban areas. That's one of our flagship projects. Namibian Chamber of Environment, perhaps the flagship project of B2Gold Namibia.
It's not only about the environment in Namibia, because we have such low population density, as I mentioned a little earlier. People live off the environment. If you support the environment, you're supporting livelihoods. What we've done is we've formalized and organized the entire sector by creating an umbrella body, which has brought all the environmental conservation NGOs under one umbrella. Managed to find the perfect guy, Dr. Chris Brown, to head it up as the CEO. We run it at arm's length from ourselves. We fund it 100% in terms of the institutional funding, so that all the project funding can go directly to the sharp point of the projects.
Most of the projects are supporting communities that support the environment. That's been very successful. One of the projects that I'm very much in favor of, the next one along, Save the San. We have the last remaining San, which, in other words, Bushmen communities that live as hunter-gatherers in an area of Eastern Namibia called Bushmanland. There's a conservancy in that area that the government has allocated to the San people, that they can continue with their traditional lifestyles. They're the oldest people. We all have San blood in us, San genes.
What has been happening, because they're so marginalized, is they've actually begun to lose their culture. They've turned to usual sort of things that marginalized communities do, alcohol, and they've lost their identity. There's an organization that we're supporting that is looking at providing the San with opportunities for schooling within the areas where they live as hunters, hunter-gatherers. The children learn from their parents. They learn about their culture, the beautiful knowledge that have been passed on for literally thousands of years, without losing it completely. Also having the opportunity of becoming westernized and going to schools and eventually to universities or getting technical qualifications.
They have the opportunity of doing both without losing their beautiful culture. Last up is a fantastic initiative we're calling it the Rhino Gold Bar project. As I mentioned, helping communities, helping the country, the planet is not optional in B2Gold. When I presented this project about a year ago to the executives, the idea was that some of our gold could go towards the production of coins at that stage, which eventually became bars because of the legal tender status requiring quite a lot of time to get approved through the Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Namibia, and eventually the Cabinet of Namibia. Eventually we discussed the production of the gold bar that would go towards conservation, 100% of the donation.
When I asked about this to the executives, because of the criticality of the rhino poaching problem, Clive said to me, "So how much money do you want?" I said, "Well, how about 1,000 oz of gold?" All the execs just nodded their heads, "Sounds good." We've literally donated 1,000 oz of gold. The project starts in January next year, and that'll go towards 100% of it, including the conservation premium over and above the price of the spot price of gold, will go towards the communities that support the rhinos up in northwest Namibia.
It's the last free-roaming population of rhinos in the world. As you're all aware, rhinos are being devastated by poaching. We say that there are 10 years left if you follow the trajectory of the graph of the reduction in rhino population, 10 years left of wild rhinos on Earth. This project is, as I say, kicking off. It'll be at the Indaba in February next year. The initial launch will be at the end of January in Namibia. We'll also be launching here in Vancouver. With that, I'm going to hand over to Eric, who's running the mine. Thank you.
Thanks, Mark. I guess I don't have much to say. He stole my thunder. Eric?
Thanks. Good afternoon. Just a bit of background. I joined B2Gold in 2014 at Otjikoto during the construction of the plant. On that note, with regards to the timeline, B2Gold acquired the deposit in 2011. Only 90% of the deposit with the other 10% to a local empowerment group, EVI. In 2012, the feasibility was completed for the 2.5 million ton per annum plant with the construction then commencing and being completed in November when commissioning commenced. In 2015, we went over to commercial production, and shortly after that, the expansion of the plant commenced to 3.1 million ton per annum plant.
The production of the plant consistently exceeded the design of 3.1 million tons , and since then we've been operating between 3.3 and 3.4 million tons per annum. On the mining side, the production rates were increased from 16 million tons per annum to 43 million tons. It was a gradual ramp-up over two years. We've also got excellent infrastructure with the deepwater port nearby, a highway that runs right past the mine, as well as an HFO solar plant hybrid.
Oh, too hasty. The production overview as of the end of the third quarter, we were 4% up on our gold production, 13% below our cash operating costs, and 12% below all-in sustaining, sitting at $501 on the cash operating costs and $895 on the all-in sustaining. The 2019 production mine tons, we're aiming to get about 8.6 million tons for the year at a grade of one gram a ton. Total waste tons mined, 34 million tons. Total tons mined, just below 43 million.
On the milling side, we're aiming for 3.4 million for the closure of 2019 at an average grade of between 1.6 g and 1.7 g a ton at a recovery of just over 98.5%. Our guidance, we will still meet between 165 kg oz and 175 kg oz of gold. We have been consistently producing between 30,000 oz and 55,000 oz per quarter since the startup in 2015, going into commercial production. As mentioned several times before, we are consistently exceeding 98% on the gold recovery. We're expected to meet our guidance of $165-$175, and also probably be better on the cash operating cost guidance of $ 520 oz-$ 560 oz.
The underground project, which as I had mentioned several times, we're busy with the study and hoping to get Board approval during the fourth quarter now. Something that is worth a mention that is not on this slide, we have also just recently achieved 5 million hours or LTI free hours on the safety. Looking into 2020, the processing plant will still mill 3.4 million tons at a recovery of 98% on the gold recovery. Mining rates will be in line with what we do now in 2019 at 43 million tons. With the Wolfshag underground, if advanced, is expected to start producing high grade ore concurrently with the open pit mining.
Other than that, there is no significant changes to the site operations. As mentioned before, the annual production for 2020, we are looking at 160 kg oz-170 kg oz, mill 3.4 million at 98% gold recovery. On the mining side, our ore production will be primarily from Otjikoto phase II and Wolfshag phase II, with waste stripping being focused on Otjikoto phases III, IV and Wolfshag phase III. On the tailing side, we will continue raising the dam by means of cyclone deposition, and we are also doing quarterly engineer of record inspections.
It's an improved situation over the requirement of an annual inspection by the engineer of record. Capital expenditure will be focused on stripping campaigns at Wolfshag, and if we go ahead with the underground project, Wolfshag Underground. Just on the Wolfshag Underground project, it's the ore coming out from Wolfshag will supplement the low-grade stockpiles to feed the mills. To feed the mill, not mills. If the project continues, the development of 15,000 m will be done by a contractor.
Whether the mining will be done by us or the contractor is still to be decided upon. Production rate, we're looking at about 1,100 tons of ore per day and the total ounces of between 225,000 oz , 270,000 oz There's approximately four-year producing life of the underground. This is a proposed timeline for the project.
As you can see, we've already commenced the study, which was commenced in the third quarter, running through to the fourth quarter. Concurrently with the study, we've already started with the environmental compliance certificate, getting all the environmental approvals done. The tendering process, we are hoping to commence during the first quarter of next year, with the underground development then commencing in the third quarter and going into production in 2022. Thank you. Andy.
Thanks, Eric. You've met Andy before. He'll run you through our exploration activities at Otjikoto and Namibia.
This will be a relatively quick overview. Just a couple of slides here. Recap of the 2019 budget, $4.8 million. Looking ahead to 2020, you can see that we're proposing a similar amount for next year. As with this year, the focus is going to be very much on near mine exploration. This year, about 12,000 m of drilling completed in and around Otjikoto, much within the mine license itself, but also some on the regional targets, looking for near surface targets in the region. Some of the highlights from this year's drilling is we have had exploration success at Wolfshag this year, going deep on the structure.
We have stepped out on some, what I would call, historic results with some success that we'll be looking to follow up on next year. What we're looking at here, obviously, is the footprint of the combined Wolfshag and Otjikoto pits overlaying on some magnetic imagery. The colored traces in the pinkish color are the projected trends of mineralization. Looking specifically at some of the near mine exploration we've done this year.
First and foremost, looking at the team in Namibia has made a very good geological model of the Wolfshag deposit and the structural controls. The hole we've indicated, OT19508W1, is a wedge off a hole that we took a 600 m step out on the known mineralization based on the strength of the structural controls in this model in a bid to hit it deep down plunge and show that the Wolfshag system existed at depth. We realize that we're well beyond the economics of the underground at this point. This is purely exploration.
Seeing that we've got greater than 6 g material at the core of this intercept, we believe that there's the possibility for some deep underground ore to come here. This is going to be the subject of further exploration in the new year. Subsequent to the wedge off 508, we stepped out an additional 100 m to the south, down plunge. The initial hole hits on an order of 100 m of very favorable alteration before getting into our target horizon. No assays on that yet. Similar to the previous hole, we've elected to complete a wedge off that hole to come up into the fold structure and see if we can get Wolfshag-type mineralization in the fold hinge at this depth. Results are pending, as I said.
One of the additional bits of success we had this year, is what we're calling the OTG chute, named after a historic drill hole drilled in something like 2010. You'll see OTG-23, which is just to the east side of the proposed underground development for the Wolfshag underground development. Looking at the core, there's readily observable fold structures in there, mineralized. We inferred a plunge or a chute-like geometry to this. Step down plunge, up plunge. Excuse me. Up plunge. You can see the projected up plunge extent of this OTG chute, as we're referring to it, would put it within 100 m of proposed underground development if we're successful in tracing it back up plunge.
We only got a few holes into it this year. Ultimately, it may be something that's best drilled off underground development. In the new year, we'll certainly chase it back up plunge near surface to see if we can continue on these grades at better than 5 g per ton, better than 4 g per ton. This certainly puts it above the 3.5 g cutoff that is potentially being used, as the cutoff for the underground material. As I said, 2020 budgets are proposed on the order of, just recap there, $4.2 million, which will give us a similar amount of money as we had to spend this year, and we'll be very much focused on near mine exploration.
Thanks, Andy. Are there any questions for the Otjikoto Namibia team? Okay. With that, we'll move on to something that's really important. It's all really important, something that we really take pride in is responsible mining and all that entails. I'd like to invite the responsible mining group up. That includes Darren, Liane Kelly, and Ken Jones. We'll be starting with Ken Jones.
Thank you, Ian. My name is Ken Jones. I am the Environmental Manager for B2Gold. I've been with the company now for 7+ years, and it's been incredible to see the growth of the company and their environmental and health and safety programs as well. I want to talk to you a little bit about our environmental management and our performance. I'm actually not gonna talk to you today about some of our more flashy programs. Maybe not talk about our coral reef programs, already been mentioned, the solar plants that we keep producing and developing. I'm gonna talk a little bit more about our strategic objectives moving forward.
One of the reasons that I'm able to do this is that we do have environmental management systems functioning and in place at every single one of our operations, audited by independent external auditors, based on international best practice. We focus our environmental management systems on ISO 14001 certifications. Our Masbate mine is also certified to this standard. We manage our critical risks at our operations for water management, tailings management, cyanide, air quality, et c, based on other international standards, be it tailings embankment safety based on Canadian or Australian standards, the cyanide code for cyanide management, or other international accepted standards.
To date, in 2019, we can report a zero trend, really. No significant environmental incidents at any of our operations this year-to-date, following the same in 2018, and the same in 2017. We have dedicated professional environmental teams at all of our sites that work to support the operating team, and operate environmentally at a very, very high level. One thing that you may be very interested in then is what are we doing internally and strategically moving forward? Of course, a big focus in industry has been tailings management.
There's been a lot of scrutiny from investors like yourselves, from regulatory, from the social side of things, due to some of the catastrophic failures over the last five years around the world from tailings embankments. What have we been doing at B2Gold in this area? In 2019, we've updated all of our internal regulations and practices and standards to match what has happened around the world with changes in international best practices.
A key component there has been updating and refining our requirements for our annual inspections, standardizing that across the company, also for our third-party reviews, a new requirement that's come due in international best practice. We will actually be performing our first third-party reviews with independent auditors at both of our Masbate and Otjikoto mines in the first quarter of next year. Another key focus has been not just having these practices and standards in place and functioning at our sites, but also access to that information if something were to ever happen, access at the corporate level.
We've created a database that we do maintain now at the corporate level, so that in the case of a serious situation, we are able to respond to investors, to governments, with up-to-date information in a very rapid manner. Of course, this is a continuing, evolving situation. Just two weeks ago, the Global Tailings Review issued their draft global tailings standard. We're currently looking at that for any potential changes to best practice that we may need to incorporate into our practices, and we'll continuously monitor the situation to maintain a high standard at all of our tailings embankments and our tailings management across the company.
Another thing that we've done this year is we've produced and generated an internal strategic plan for our environment. We're operating at a high level, so where do we want our operations to go in the next couple of years? You'll see there's six key components to this strategic plan that we have for the company, focused on what those key risks are for the company. Two of them I'd like to just touch on briefly, water and energy and climate change.
Water, of course, is key. Mines require high quantities of water. We work in a range of water environments, from the deserts in Africa to subtropical excessive water environments in the Philippines and potentially in Colombia. We will be updating all of our water scarcity and water risk assessments in 2020. We're completing updated water accounting at all of our operations that ties in with international ICMM and Australian guidelines for water accounting. All this will lead to, in 2021, we plan to issue an external water report that will allow us to gather all of this additional monitoring and metrics that we're creating now and relay that better externally to investors, to regulators, and others.
Ultimately, this will lead, hopefully, to water use reduction targets of how can we minimize our impact in the areas that we operate. Similarly, with energy and climate, a topic that's ever developing, and we have a continued plan as well with energy and climate. We, of course, are building our second solar plant at Fekola right now. I believe it will be the largest hybrid solar plant in the world when it's completed. We're also working this year, we will complete our emissions inventory estimates for all of our operations.
Then next year, further integration of climate change risk into our policy and into enterprise risk assessments and site risk assessments to ensure that we are positioned to be able to manage any risks to the company from climate change in the future. Similarly to water, we will then put this into an external energy and climate change report in 2021, and ultimately lead to emissions reductions targets for the company in the future.
Lastly, we do plan to launch in 2020 a bit of an ESG transparency hub, if you will. A portion of our website that is a consolidated portal for external stakeholders, for investors, for communities, in which we can put forward all this information in a transparent manner, make all of our standards reports accessible to the public. Is our commitment to the environment to keep ourselves accountable to our stakeholders. With that, I'll turn it over to Darren to talk about health and safety.
Thanks, Ken. Which one do I do?
The green there.
Yeah. Thanks, Ken. Good afternoon. My name is Darren Parry. I'm the Manager of Health and Safety for B2Gold. B2Gold has set an objective of sending workers home injury-free each and every shift. In 2019, I'm pleased to say that we've exceeded our targets for ensuring injury reduction and safety on site. This will be our fourth consecutive year of injury reduction with the realization that 2019 will be the safest on record. These results will place us in the top 5% within industry for safe operations. Our achievements are due in part to our leadership team's commitment to safety, the technical expertise of our on-ground OHS teams, and a best practice approach to safety systems, processes, and procedures.
We also take a proactive approach to behavior-based safety that drives individual and collective ownership for making safe decisions, and lastly, we focus on prevention. These slides, I'm just going to do a quick overview here. Our safety system elements, we have 18 standards. We have 20 operational standards, an audit protocol, risk management approach, crisis management plans, and OHS incident tracking and reporting that are consistent throughout our operations.
Those are in alignment with ISO standards, COR, TSM, and ICMM. Our system is also independently audited by independent experts for safety. We use lead and lag indicators to track performance monthly, quarterly, and annually. Once again, our OHS activities are focused on prevention. The results of that, as I said, this is a four-year, over four years, we've reduced lost time incidences by 94%. We've had a reduction from the previous year of 78% and a 25% reduction in restricted work injuries over a three-year period.
We saw an increase in restricted work injuries in 2018, but if you actually look at the number of days, six injuries totaling 129 days for this year as opposed to Sorry, six injuries for 129 days versus six for 79. That's a 40% reduction from the previous year. Next slide shows us looking at our internal benchmarks and externally compared to ICMM companies, of which there are 30 members, and Mine Safety Roundtable in North America, of which there are 17 companies. Looking at the previous years, I mentioned we had a 78% reduction in lost time injury.
We've had a 87% reduction in total reportables, that's lost time and medical aid. If we take a comparison between ICMM group and the Mine Safety Roundtable, we're 87% lower than their average. We've had a 97% reduction in our severity rate from 2018. Far, we've only had 15 days total lost time for three injuries total, compared to 201 days the previous year. We're injuring people at a less severe rate, and they're taking less time off as a result of those injuries. The last one, just to highlight some of our individual accomplishments at site.
Masbate was just awarded the National Award for Safety System Excellence by the Philippine Department of Labor. They were the Silver Award finalist, second place in the whole country. Masbate has also gone one year, 370 days without a lost time incident. Previously, they had a run of about three and a half years, 17 million hours. Otjikoto is approaching almost two years lost time incident-free, 637 days. They'll hit that target in March of 2020.
Otjikoto is also being recognized by the Chamber of Mines for excellence in occupational health and safety systems training and competency and are being asked to develop some best practices around mine rescue. Fekola, unfortunately, has had three incidents this year, mainly related to upgrades and maintenance. They previously have gone two and a half years without a lost time incident. All good stories around health and safety, proactive and looking forward. I think that's it. I'll turn it over to Liane.
I'd like to introduce Liane Kelly. She's responsible for our Responsible Mining Report, which has been an initiative that began three years ago. A very successful one, and she's going to talk to you a bit about that.
Hopefully many of you have read our Responsible Mining Report. We've been producing or generating a report for the last three years, and that's our vehicle, our prime vehicle for being able to communicate about our performance related to environmental, social, and governance issues. For us, the process of actually generating the report is quite valuable, because it allows us to go really deeply into all these areas and understand where there's gaps and where we have really good approaches and solutions in one area, and how we're able to bring that to another region.
When we think about this audience, our Responsible Mining Report demonstrates to you how we manage risk. Risk related to environmental, social, and governance factors. It's our main vehicle right now for being able to communicate our performance with respect to ESG issues. There's also external firms out there, ESG rating firms, that also analyze our performance related to ESG, and they rate us every year. Over the last three years, our score or our rating has improved dramatically. However, we're not chasing a score.
What we are doing is we're working very closely, communicating very closely with these particular two groups, Sustainalytics and ISS, with the objective of making sure that the information that they have about us is accurate and complete. What we really want is that when you receive our ESG reports on B2Gold's performance, we want to make sure that accurately reflects what we're doing. You've been listening all day to a number of different factors about how we perform, how we plan, and how we operate.
There's financial and legal and technical production numbers, but a lot of our success is also related to how we manage environmental, social, and governance issues. The next few slides come from our 2018 Responsible Mining Report, and right now we're already starting to collect data and information for our 2019 report as we come to the end of the year. Our environmental performance, as you're aware, in 2018 was very strong, and it's reflected in the numbers that you see here in the report, and that you continue to see in 2019. In 2018, we also established a local procurement baseline, and the reason why we do that is because we want to be able to demonstrate how all this economic value that we generate also gets distributed through local procurement and local employment opportunities.
The importance of that is because governments and community stakeholders, that's one of their number one priorities and expectations when we come to propose a project to work in those countries. Being able to communicate what we're doing in terms of local procurement and local employment is critical to being able to meet those promises that we make to those government stakeholders and community stakeholders. Our supply chain as well, we manage risk in our supply chain. We've been implementing performance expectations with our major suppliers and then rolling that out with our other suppliers in our supply chain.
Ken Jones has already spoken about our comprehensive environmental management system, and the other different solutions and investments that we make in order to mitigate and manage environmental aspects of our operations. The approach that we've been taking, in 2018, we piloted a couple of schemes. We've used Otjikoto as an example as our pilot mine. We piloted a water accounting framework at Otjikoto in 2018. We piloted greenhouse gas emissions inventory reporting there.
As you've heard from Ken, in 2019, we've been rolling out those reporting frameworks to other sites, and we'll continue to do that going forward. We talk a lot about how we've grown very quickly. You've seen a lot of timelines about B2Gold's growth and timelines in each of these regions. That growth also means a growth in a lot of people that choose to work for us, and with all that comes quite a diverse mix of languages, people, cultures, customs. We chose to, a couple years ago, to focus specifically in that diversity, to focus on gender diversity.
You'll read in the report why we made that commitment, the analysis we did to try to understand if there are barriers within the sector, and how we can actually address those barriers. In 2019 report, that journey continues and you'll read about the strategic plan that we've created that we're going to be applying going forward to be able to move the bar on gender diversity within our company. Darren presented our strong, positive trajectory in our health safety performance. Those numbers, if you look at the report, what's behind those numbers, you'll be able to see a five-year rolling average of all of the data that Darren referred to, and you can benchmark that against other organizations when you look at their sustainability reports against our reports.
Even with that strong trajectory, we continue to invest in safety solutions. In 2018, again, Otjikoto, we implemented a fatigue monitoring solution there, and that was immediately successful. We're going to be rolling that out, going forward to other sites. Communities. As many of you are aware, in order to permit and operate a mine, you need social acceptance. Fundamental to that is how you engage with stakeholders.
We start engaging very early stage exploration throughout the life of a mine, and then we have very specific ways of engaging with stakeholders when we start contemplating future closure plans and how that's going to impact stakeholders. One of the ways that B2Gold has been successful in working in this very geopolitical regions that you've seen us working in, is we have an open door approach to stakeholder engagement. We have literally hosted thousands of stakeholders through mine tours in all four of our regions where we've been operating.
Those are government stakeholders, regional local stakeholders, teachers, youth, all kinds of stakeholders. We have an open door approach where we're able to demonstrate how we mine, how we manage environmental rehabilitation of lands, how we manage water, how we invest in communities. We've also taken a proactive approach to human rights. In all four of our regions, we have conducted human rights risk assessments in order to understand where potential risk exists related to human rights issues, which also includes security.
Those risk assessments have translated into action plans, and now we're monitoring those action plans to make sure that they've actually been put in place, and that our human rights due diligence is embedded throughout our whole organization. We want to make sure those human rights reports aren't just sitting there as a report on a shelf. Lastly, a number of the speakers have talked about and referred to the different community investment projects that we do in every region. Here, we're simply demonstrating that level of investment in terms of dollars, but we also monitor for our significant community investment projects.
We monitor the impact and outcome of those projects. As you've heard many of us say, we want to understand how that's changing people's lives. One example in Mali, a couple of years ago, we started a market garden activity or project, that in 2018, there were 20 women involved in that. It was providing an alternative livelihood to those women, an alternative to artisanal mining. In 2017, that collection of women, their annual income was about $3,500. In 2018, one year later, their collective income was over $21,000, which was about a 500% increase.
More importantly is those 18 women, that rise in income allowed those 18 women to rise above the poverty line in Mali. Those are the type of impacts and outcomes that we're really passionate about and that you've probably heard the different country managers and Clive and the executive talk about. We're right now putting together our information for a 2019 report, and we really encourage you to read the report directly so that you see how we are managing environmental, social, and governance issues, and how we're mining responsibly.
Thank you, Liane. Thank you, everybody on the responsible mining panel. Very, very impressive. Are there any questions for the group? Lawson from Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
[inaudible] Thank you very much.
Sure. I think all of us will be involved in Nicaragua as needed. I think we still are in a bit of a, I don't know, consulting, supporting role, is my understanding. Of course, professionally and personally, just available to our colleagues there. As far as Gramalote, I know that a lot of the corporate team is already looking at the PEA and the feasibility study, et c.
In terms of Nicaragua, Calibre wanted to have our involvement on an Advisory Board and a representative on their Board of Directors as well. Dale Craig's playing a role there, which gives them some continuity, gives them the history, because Dale was involved for 12 years with Nicaragua directly, and then overseeing it from an executive point of view. Now, as you heard, he's taking on an exciting new challenge in Colombia, but he'll be there for continuity to help Calibre out with whatever they need. That was at their request. Any other questions, general questions or ways? Go ahead.
Just want to say great job on the ESG presentation, and really appreciate you taking that approach in terms of ESG as well. In terms of, I just want to see how much engagement do you have with investors that are looking into ESG? Are you in direct contact with them, or is it just with the two firms that are looking at ESG and talking about ESG?
Mr. Scott?
Sure.
It's not just the two firms that we deal with on a day-to-day basis. There's a number of other ESG-focused institutions that we currently have our finger on the pulse of. It's a much broader scope in terms of our engagement.
It's a great question because it's becoming so much more important in the world. As you can see, we're positioned very well in that space, but we need to communicate that continually all the time. Anything else to add, though?
Yeah, I was highlighting those two particular firms because they're the ones that a lot of our investors are saying that they're receiving their reports. There's actually quite a number of them that are popping up. Some of them are just niche firms that just focusing on human rights. They evaluate our performance with respect to that, and we get rated or scored on that. There's quite a number of them that we're responding to. I guess the question could be turned to you is, are there firms that are evaluating a company's performance that you think that we should be working with?
I think that definitely we can have a conversation offline. Thank you.
Thanks, Abhi. Any other questions on any topic we've covered or haven't covered? Great. Okay, we're ahead of time, so I get to nag at you for a while longer. Sorry. I won't be very long. I just want to summarize a little bit what we've tried to put forward today, and from my perspective, being one of the founders of this company, it always amazes me, and I'm pretty close to it, but the experience level and the professionalism of this group. It's a real honor to work with all of you. It's great to be able to get everyone together and share this, what we hear internally sometimes and what our Board hears, be able to share that with investors in a format like this.
I think the key takeaways from my perspective from this should be obviously a highly professional, responsible gold mining company that is as well as very profitable and a company that has shown the ability over years to manage risk, as we've talked about, and all sorts of different challenges. It's all about accountability. You've heard a lot about that today, that's really one of the most important things. That's why we do so much of what we do ourselves internally. We don't use an awful lot of contractors or consultants.
There are some good ones out there, ultimate accountability is doing it yourselves. That's where I think this extraordinary group of people coming together in every avenue of our industry, working so well and working as a unit. I talk a little bit about silos in the industry, our industry, I guess others as well. You have silos with people in different silos, and they're comfortable there, and one's geology, exploration, engineering, development, and construction. You've got corporate finance, et c. This mining industry, in my mind, has struggled for decades with not being able to break down those silos.
Just what that means is, for example, on an exploration success. If the explorations are successful, and we've had great success with Tom's tremendous team, but if they're successful, they often are, and they keep it to themselves for quite a long time. You have to sort of rip it out of their hands and give it to the engineers. The engineers don't tend to often consult back to the geologists and say, "Geo, are we building the right size mill?" If you have exploration success.
It's those things that I thought were a real challenge, and I started on this back in the Bema days. Why can't we have it all? Why can't we be a great explorer who finds a lot of gold, but a great builder of mines or responsible miner, and ultimately, a company that is very profitable and ultimately continues to grow and pay a dividend? What makes us a hybrid, because we are all those things, it's really uncommon, partly because of the silos. We try to get, and over the years, it's been an interesting challenge, and it's been very successful.
It took some time to get the geologists and the engineers to break down the barriers between the silos, to sit around together and communicate. I've always really tried to push this because the more that the finance people understand what the engineers are doing, the more they respect them and vice versa, et c. I always thought, why can't we transform Bema from a highly successful gold exploration company to a builder of mines and a responsible senior gold producer? Doing that, keep the entrepreneurial flair on the exploration side of things. That sounds really straightforward. It sounds really, hopefully, kind of smart. It's really uncommon. It's very uncommon.
The rare exploration company that's successful, not because they're not good at it, because it's so hard. They shouldn't try and build mines, frankly. They should get bought out by someone or take somebody's shares, as we've done, and then take their project forward. There's a problem in the production side as far as I'm concerned, because a lot of times the big gold mining companies aren't very good at exploration because the mindset changes when you produce. You have to have very disciplined engineers to pull all this off. You've got to have round peg, round hole guys and women.
That's their job because you can't get it wrong when you're going to pulverize a mountain of rock and get gold out of it, a profit. The discipline can take over sometimes, and it's a good thing. It's required, but you still have to try. I wanted to see if we could have a company, we wanted to see where we could do all of that and do it extremely well, as you've seen, still be light on our feet, still be entrepreneurial, still go where others fear to tread, chasing the best deposits that we think are the best deposits in the world, doing it with this great exploration team as well.
I think that's one of the key takeaways when I look at where we are today and where do we go in the future. We are that hybrid company that's proven that you can be aggressive without being reckless. There's a huge difference, and that's why I think it's important for you to see all the things we do and how we do what we do, trying to make sure that all stakeholders are respected and all stakeholders win in the prospect of us developing our business.
If you take all this experience we've had together and where we sit today and look at our future, I think it looks extraordinarily bright. Continue to do what we do day in, day out, safely, responsibly, taking care of communities and the environment and all the things we do. Also the ability to find more gold and do, at the right times, accretive deals and acquisitions to continue to grow the company. In my mind, that's what's fun about this, and frankly, that's one of the reasons that we still do this.
At the end of the day, it's different. It's different, and I love the fact that you can combine the passion that comes with entrepreneurial spirit and the benefits of being entrepreneurial when you're successful and think outside the box. Combine that with really good and strong people at everything we do. That, in my mind, makes it unusual, maybe not unique, but definitely unusual. I want to thank everyone who was involved here today.
I want to thank those of you that came out to hear the story and those of you on the webcast. Obviously, our Board of Directors. You see Bob Cross our Chairman's here and some of our other Directors you've been introduced to before. Great support from the Board. A tremendous thank you to all the presenters, but also the people behind the presenters. It's just wonderful to get you all together and share the stories and path the way forward. Thank you very much for your participation. I hope it was an interesting afternoon.