That's Maurice. That's it, right. Okay, so I'm as I said, Mark Learmonth, Caledonia's CEO, joined by Victor Gapare, an Executive Director. He's in Harare today. Chester Goodburn, the CFO, is in Johannesburg. Maurice Mason, the Vice President of Corporate Development, and Camilla are both based in London. And Dana sends his apologies. He's traveling in Zimbabwe today. Okay? So as usual, let's. We'll go through the slides. There'll be plenty of time left at the end of the presentation for questions. And so let's get... Just so, let's get going. So by way of summary, the production we'd already previously announced, it was 22,900 ounces for the quarter, of which Bilboes was about 1,000.
So production for Blanket was just under 21,800, which was a production record. After a very difficult gold price, which supported the revenue. Gross profit was a big improvement on what it has been in the previous quarters, but as we go through this presentation, you'll see that we do need to pay some attention to two specific areas in the cost line, being our use of electricity and labor costs, both of which we need to pay some attention to.
And again, the other thing I'll take away from this, this sheet here is the very strong net cash inflow from operating activities of $14.4 million, $14.5 million for the quarter, which is pretty much nearly a quarterly record. Now, clearly, that is for CapEx, and in the quarter, we were continuing to spend a lot of money, primarily on the new tailings facility, which I'll talk in a moment. That's a summary of the results. Can we move on, Maurice? Yeah, so by way of mention, that there's a quarterly production, a quarterly production record of Blanket. Consolidated on-mine costs are better, but need to, we can do work to improve them further.
During the quarter, we announced some very encouraging drilling results from Blanket, and that work continues. But pretty much two-thirds of every hole we drilled came out better in terms of width and grade. In due course, that will then be fed into a revised resource statement, and then in due course, that will flow into a revised life of mine plan. But we would expect the most positive drilling results to flow through into an incremental resource and an extended life of mine. For reasons perhaps we can discuss later, I really don't think Blanket's... It's probably more likely that Blanket will extend its production rather than increase its production. Perhaps we can come back to that, Tim, in a moment.
Bilboes was returned to care and maintenance, as was previously indicated, with effect from the first of October, when the mining contractor's notice period ran out. And we expect that to result in a significant reduction in the cost of Bilboes from $1 million a month to $200,000 a month. So next quarter, Q4, we're hopeful, actually, that the business, the Bilboes will be cash neutral as they continue to collect gold from the leach. The EIA of Motapa has been approved, so we'll be able to mobilize on the ground in Motapa early in the new year, as the drilling season starts. Then we've also received an offer to purchase the solar plant.
Again, perhaps we can discuss that, perhaps a little bit later on. Terms not disclosed yet, but, we were confident, we're confident we can sell it for more than we, we paid for it. And we don't need to own, we don't need to own, that solar plant. All we need to do is benefit from the, from the cheaper electricity it produces. We don't need to have our capital, capital tied up in that.
Then the tailings facility, the new tailings facility, that we're spending about $25 million on this year and next year, we started pouring on that a couple of weeks ago, which now takes the pressure off the existing tailings facility, which was reaching the end of its useful life, as we've increased tonnage throughput from 1,900 tons a day to 2,400 tons a day. When completed by the end of next year, the new tailings facility will have a life of about 14 years. So it's a long life asset. Okay, just in operational terms, there's not a huge amount to talk about. You can see it quite clearly towards the right-hand side at the top graph. The gray line, that's the tons.
You can see from quarter four to quarter one, the tons took a fairly sharp dip and, have now, recovered in Q3 to where we expect them to be. The increase in grade is as planned. So you know, the increase, that's not something we, we went looking for. It was, that, that was, that was in accordance with the, with the mine plan. So, as I mentioned, the return to tons milled and, and target grade is behind the, the return in production to where we expected it to be, which is good. Now, should we move on, Maurice? Okay, now we're going to move on to the, financial, section. So I'll hand over to Chester, the CFO, to take us through these, these following pages dealing with finance. So, Chester, over to you.
Thank you, Mark. Our revenues are up 15%, Q3 2022 to Q3 2023. That's due to increased production from Blanket Mine. Blanket Mine this quarter has increased its production. It's a record quarter for us, and that shows a turnaround from the Blanket, Blanket's production side. Overall, we had 2.5% more ounces that we sold during the quarter, and we had an increased gold price by 12%. Unfortunately, our production costs increased. As Mark said, the production cost at Bilboes oxides was usually about $200,000 per month. That's $600,000 per quarter. And we are quite pleased to see that the $3.2 million that we spent on Bilboes, for Q3, come down to about $600,000 in the year.
Blanket, on the Blanket side, we increased our costs by about $1.1 million. That was due to higher electricity usage, as well as overtime spent on the labor, but we'll come onto that a little bit later. If we go down to our tax expense, looking at our tax expense for the quarter, you see a higher effective tax rate. That's due to the, the predominantly due to Bilboes' offsites that are intense, and cannot be deducted against our tax expense. And if you count back the, the Bilboes' operating costs, you'll see that our tax expense is normalized. So we expect that to normalize to effective tax rates that we've seen in prior quarters. Adjusted EPS, that's lower on a consolidated basis, predominantly due to the, the higher costs, and we'll get onto the production costs on the next slide. Maurice?
Looking at our salaries and wages at Blanket, that very much increased due to head count and overtime. We should be able to look at that overtime to utilize our labor force more effectively, like we've done producing the same amount of ounces, similar amount of tons in 2022. We hope to reduce that, and we'll get back to the markets and inform you about our initiatives that we will implement for the overtime and the headcounts. Additionally, our kilowatt usage has been increasing over the year, and that's predominantly due to new shafts, the new Central Shaft that we've commissioned, and we're running three shafts at the moment. We're also looking at reducing our kilowatt per hour usage. What's good about these two usage balances is that it should be within our control.
We've proven before that we've been able to operate at lower costs, and we should be able to find initiatives to reduce these costs. On the Bilboes offsite side, as I've said, that cost should be once-off, but should be reduced to about $600,000 per quarter from next year, significantly reducing our costs to what we see in our life of mine estimates. Can we turn the page, please? From an administrative expenses point of view, to highlight the big increases, there were some good expenditures on advisory services fees for a 3.5 million ounce ore body of Bilboes gold mines. That was paid to the advisory fees on acquisition of that deal.
Listing fees increased throughout the year, and that was due to the successful mining claims that we had on Q1 and Q2. Wages and salaries increased due to the additional staff members that we've been taking over, which we took over during the Bilboes' deal, and they currently are helping us with things like the feasibility study. I'm quite pleased to see that we're making some progress in that. Further, we've added some of the additional governance structures and increasing our internal audit department and also bolstering up our IT resources. Now, if you look at the total there, if you exclude the once-off payment to advisory fees on Bilboes, and acquisition of Bilboes, we should be able to reduce our administrative expenses to very close to what we've been spending in previous quarters and years. You can turn the page, please.
This is an illustrative example of our on-mine costs. You see the contribution of Bilboes oxides in the green block on the on-mine costs to the left. That we believe should come down to about $600,000 a quarter, so we do have a plan for that, reducing our on-mine costs, and we hope to find solutions to reduce our kilowatt hours to what it used to be. Similarly, labor, that should come out, and if that those three costs increases come out, we should be able to get our on-mine costs down to what you've seen in the life of mine, between about $815 to $850 dollars per ounce.
All-in sustaining cost was mostly influenced by the on-mine costs, and if we fix the on-mine costs, you'll be seeing that similar to what we estimate in our life of mine. Can we turn the page, please? In terms of tax, we got a higher effective tax rate, predominantly due to Bilboes' offsites operational losses being ring-fenced and being not deductible against our tax charges. I will note our taxes are calculated in a combination of RTGS and U.S. dollars, depending on what the transaction is denominated in. And that sort of puts it a little bit off from what you expect due to the RTGS devaluations. But if we take out the Bilboes' offsites costs of the profit before tax, you should see our effective tax rate is normalized into what you've seen in prior quarters.
Throughout all this, the effective tax rate remained at 24.72%. Moving on. Nothing new on the balance sheet. Firstly, our non-current assets increased due to the Bilboes acquisition. Our current assets increased due to the solar sale. We plan to sell the solar plants, and that's moved the solar plant about $14.2 million down to the current asset category from non-current assets. We have to make a good profit on the solar plant and use all the power from the solar plant, but not own it. We should be able to use the proceeds from solar plants and invest in our future gold businesses, which yield a higher return.
Other than that, the current liabilities have been fairly flat, and non-current liabilities increased because of the issuance of the solar bonds earlier this year. Go to the third page. So our cash is in the right places. We expect these cash balances to go up. Currently, we are exchanging all our RTGS balances, and we have mechanisms to exchange our RTGS balances. We aren't holding any cash balances in Zimbabwe that we cannot move outside. Can we turn the page?
Yeah. Can I... Sorry, can I interject here? So I just want to, before we go too much further, just reiterate more clearly something that we've said for a long time. We're moving to... Well, we've always had to make capital allocation decisions, but as we move forward and with the evaluation of the Bilboes opportunity, we have to be very clear on how we go through this capital allocation process. So as I mentioned before, our primary objective is to come up with a commercialization approach for Bilboes, and indeed all of our investments, which optimizes the net present value per Caledonia share.
So the net present value of future cash flows, cash flows attributable to a Caledonia share, and that takes into account any dilution that will be needed to fund the new project. Again, something I said previously, we're not interested really in doubling production or tripling production, and doubling or tripling the number of shares in issue, because that just effectively means that we've stood still. And we'll talk a little bit later about where we are in terms of the Bilboes feasibility study. As Chester mentioned, we are fairly advanced in discussions to sell the solar project, which will release capital from a non-core asset at a premium to what we paid for it to be cycled into our core business, which is developing and running gold mines.
In respect to the Bilboes transaction, we are considering a phased approach. So refreshing the initial feasibility study is a relatively straightforward exercise. But preparing a new feasibility study for a smaller phased approach is a brand new piece of work, which requires new pit designs and all sorts of other stuff, which will take slightly longer. And it's also fair to say that whilst we have an appetite for some gearing in our overall capital structure, we, I suspect, will be relatively conservative when it comes to that. So I just thought it was worthwhile, just explicitly saying a few words in respect of our capital allocation policy. Maurice, could you move on to the next page?
Well, as I mentioned, the Bilboes' gold update, this quarter just finished, quarter three, will be the last one to be affected by the negative contribution or the large negative contribution from Bilboes'. We expect the monthly costs to reduce from $1 million to about $200,000. And for this quarter, Q4, we'd expect that to be broadly cash neutral as we continue to harvest some of the gold that is on the heap leach. It's disappointing, the disappointing production from the oxides has no bearing on the quality of the underlying sulfide resource. We entered into the Bilboes transaction to acquire and develop the sulfide resource, about 2.5 million ounces at 2.3 grams a ton. The oxides was just purely incidental.
One of the things we'd hoped to avoid doing was having to retrench a considerable number of employees. We'd hoped to avoid that, but I'm afraid we couldn't avoid that. And so we have had to let quite a lot of people go, which, you know, in context, especially in the context of the recent elections, was, you know, something we'd hoped to avoid doing. But we are where we are. We couldn't sustain that cash drain for any longer. Work continues on the revised feasibility study, as I've just outlined. The work in terms of updating and refreshing the existing large scale project is relatively straightforward.
The new work on the phased approach will probably only get completed in the first quarter of next year, and we need both bits of information to be able to make the appropriate capital allocation decisions. So we'd expect to be able to give some further guidance early in the next quarter. Could we move on? Okay, so in terms of outlook, hoping to continue producing at Blanket in the targeted range of 75-80 thousand ounces. And pretty much similar going forward. As I mentioned, the encouraging drilling results at Blanket will almost certainly close through it to an increased resource base, which will probably result in an extended life of mine rather than increased production.
To increase production of Blanket will require probably disproportionate investment in things like mills, CIL tanks and non-productive social infrastructure, which means that it will become more expensive just to have an extra sort of five or 10,000 ounces, and we could use that money to better effect elsewhere. As I've mentioned, the feasibility study at Bilboes and having got the EIA approved at Motapa, as we get through the rain seasons in Zimbabwe, then that will be the appropriate time to actually commit people, commit resources to the ground at Motapa. Good move on? I think we're nearly finished. Yeah, so I think that's the end of the formal presentation. We're very happy to open it to questions. Any questions?
I have some questions. Hold on a second. You've got a raised hand here. Just give me a sec. Just gonna unmute.
Hello. Hello, this is Ernie Molish. How are you doing?
Fine, thanks, Ernie.
I've got a question concerning the electricity supply. How much is the electricity actually costing you? Is it... You said $2.6 million per quarter, and then could you break down how much of that is really fuel cost in South African rand, maybe, and then how much is coming off the solar plant?
Okay. Well, 25% of the power we use comes from the solar plant. The solar... I don't know if I explained this before, it's a little bit complex, but I'll do it again. The solar plant is owned by Caledonia, not by Blanket. So Caledonia owns 100% of the solar plant. Caledonia only owns 64% of Blanket. We, Caledonia, funded the solar plant, and so the benefit arising from the solar plant is crystallized at the Caledonia level, not the Blanket level. So the solar plant sells its power to Blanket at, correct me if I'm wrong, Chester, I think it's about $0.13/kWh. It only costs about $0.01 to $0.02, if that, to produce it. So the profit arising on the...
The benefit arising on the solar is crystallizing at Caledonia, and that's reflected in the all-in sustaining cost per share, not the on-mine cost. So that's a bit of a wrinkle, but I think you'll understand why we're doing it. Chester, the cost of the grid power, is that about $0.108, is that correct?
Yes, $0.1086, yeah.
Now, that is, we import the grid power we import through a facility called the Intensive Energy User Group, which was a, let's say, sort of industry, a body set, sort of, set up under the aegis of the president, actually, and that imports power directly from Mozambique and Zambia. Now, which means that we benefit from a cheaper rate of the imported power than we would if we were buying grid power in Zimbabwe. I think the grid power in Zimbabwe just go up. Is it about 16 cents? I mean, Chester, Chester or Victor, can you... The grid power in Zimbabwe, how much does that...? Is that-
$0.13-something
Okay.
If you want-
I thought I read something yesterday, which said it was going up even further. So we do get the benefit from the grid power that we're getting it at a cheaper rate, but we still suffer very unstable grid power supply because the Zimbabwe grid is very dilapidated, particularly in so far as it serves Blanket, which means that we continue to experience power interruptions and voltage spikes and troughs, which then means we have to fall back onto the diesel generators. And the diesel generators, I think, will cost about $0.45/kWh. Chester, do you have to hand or to memory the approximate split of the power usage that's between solar, grid, and diesel?
Do you have that to hand? It's not something that, I know, I know where it is. I just can't remember what it is. If you don't, if you don't-
Yes.
If you don't, we can provide it, we can provide it later. But do you have it to hand?
I'll look for it.
Okay. All right, we'll go. Yeah, okay, well, while we're talking, there are some very technical things that we could try and do with the solar farm to improve the quality of the power we receive through the grid. And that's called power factor correction. And that's something we're exploring with the proposed buyer of the grid, which would mean that on one hand, we would get less direct power from the solar project, but on the other hand, it would mean that we could use a higher proportion of the grid power that we get in through the IEUG, and thereby displace the use of the diesel.
So we'd be losing, you know, the use of some solar, but instead, foregoing solar for displacing diesel, which will be a very powerful benefit for us. So we're exploring that with the purchaser of the solar project. So sorry, Ernie, that was a very complex, long answer to quite a simple question. Did I answer everything or do you have further questions?
Yeah, that answers most of it. Just out of curiosity, is the solar farm already paid for? Or-
No.
... how much profit do you expect to get off the sale of that?
... No, it's paid for. It's paid for in equity. We'll not disclose the price because that's an ongoing negotiation, so.
Okay.
It's a very reasonable question, but one that we very reasonably are unable to answer. But we are expect-
Well.
But we are expecting to sell it for more than we paid for it.
Okay. Let me, let me turn it around. Is there a prospect of doing another solar farm if you get another 25%?
Yes, yes, there is. And the buyer for this solar project is interested in developing its footprint further in Zimbabwe. So very, very much there is the option to do more solar. But I've got to say, so maybe we have a smaller top-up plant at Blanket. Maybe. It wouldn't be very big. But Bilboes. If we can get, and there's no reason to believe we wouldn't be able to, if we can get power through the Intensive Energy User Group for Bilboes, because Bilboes is in a much better position geographically, vis-a-vis the Zimbabwe grid. Bilboes could probably manage very effectively with imported power, with relatively little in the way of power interruptions.
And so the benefit of solar power for Bilboes may be much smaller than the benefit at Blanket. So it's not altogether clear to us whether we would actually need to put a solar project in at Bilboes. But again, that will come out in the evaluations. So very much the buyer is the sort of buyer who's there to get bigger, and they're using this the purchase of the Blanket Solar project as a sort of a starter in Zimbabwe.
Okay, that answers my questions on that. I've got another question on Bilboes sulfide project.
Mm-hmm.
Are you contemplating using other approaches other than BIOX for processing that? I know there's quite a few projects coming online in Africa, where they're having different sulfide projects being exploited, and a lot of the technologies are not using BIOX. They're using some kind of oxidation method that's cheaper and more effective than BIOX.
Yeah. Victor, do you want to... Are you able to address that, Victor?
Thank you very much. Yes. You know, during the feasibility study, which we did, we did look at the various options. And the option which seems to give us the least capital cost, and also in terms of treating the material itself, seems to be BIOX. There are some other options which our consultants have suggested that when we do the feasibility study going forward, maybe we may look at and review. But pretty much a lot of work was done during the feasibility study, and BIOX seemed to be the most logical one from a CapEx point of view, plus also from a proximity of other operations which are using BIOX in South Africa.
Yeah. There's also fair to say that there's been very limited prospect for us to export concentrate from Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwe government has a red line, a policy red line in country beneficiation. So, our ability to export concentrate, I suspect, would be, I don't, I doubt very much we'd get it, I'm afraid. So we've got to have something in country, which is going to get it to, you know, 99.5%. Does that answer your question, Johnny?
Yes, it does. Thank you.
Okay. Any further questions, Camilla?
Yeah, there are a few. I'm gonna deal with the right hand first, so the next one.
This is Barry, Christian.
Good. Nick, could you... Hello, Nick.
How's it, how's it, Mark? How's it, everybody? Can you maybe take us through any changes in legislation and regulations that might have affected Blanket or Bilboes, I think, in the last six months? And obviously, we've been through, you guys have been through, Zimbabwe has been through an election. Has that had any reflections?
Not that I'm aware of. I mean, the elections all seem to. We very, very calmly, actually, compared to what we were expecting. Victor, do you wanna... Anything that you're aware of, Victor?
No, there isn't anything really from a policy perspective which has changed.
Okay.
The election isn't in terms of continuity of policies. We expect the policies to continue. And maybe the one which we may point out is the fact that there was a piece of legislation which said the US dollar regime, or the multi-currency regime currently in place would end in 2025. They've actually extended that by another policy instrument, which says it will end in 2030. But the way we look at it, and also in terms of most of the officials, they're looking at it from a point of view that the day maybe the multi-currency system disappears is when certain economic conditions have been met. For instance, the inflation, the import cover in terms of forex, those are the critical things for the multi-currency regime to end, and obviously the confidence in the Zimbabwe currency.
Mm-hmm. So, I mean, Nick, Nick, clearly, you have something in mind, because you wouldn't have otherwise asked that question if you didn't have something. You, you must have something in mind.
Well, what, what you should have been saying, Mark, is that you may be the first company to get gold through the Fidelity and o- off-
Oh, yeah. But, yeah, that wasn't recent. We did... Sorry, I mean, just to reinforce the point, we sell, we've been exporting gold directly from Zimbabwe since, I think, April, so that's not new. One of the... Actually, I think really, I'll turn it around. I would say that we've seen quite a welcome period of policy stability, actually, in Zimbabwe in recent months. I probably shouldn't say that, because that's bound to jinx it. But, no, pretty much we've seen things be relatively stable.
And long, long may that continue, because frankly, that's, that's the biggest, the, the hardest thing for us to deal with is, is, rapid, rapid changes in policy, which, which in the past have, have caused quite a lot of dislocation and caused us, yes, some, some, some headaches. But, all seems relatively stable, Nick.
Okay. So, is this overtime your go-to solution for shortfalls in production going forward?
No, it isn't. No, it isn't. Overtime seems to be the go-to position for people looking at production bonuses. So no, we've got to be more. We've got to have a much, much closer attention to the scheduling of labor, so that we get people down the shafts into their place of work more effectively and more efficiently, and minimize the time they spend waiting to get down the shaft or that scheduling. And again, it's not difficult. Okay? So no, we shouldn't be using that amount of overtime.
Yeah. Thank you.
Howie, I'm not sure if... I know you had a written question. I'm not sure if you've got an additional question that you want.
I do. Can you hear me?
Hello, Howie.
Hi. Hi, Mark, Maurice. Hello. I'm looking at your diluted earnings per share and your regular earnings per share. If I take $5.6 million of profit and divide it by 19 million, that's 24 million, 24 cents a share. Do you have more than 19 million shares?
No, we've got 19, 19.1 million shares.
How did the diluted earnings become $0.15? What's the dilution?
Uh, um-
It looks like a miscalculation.
Chester? Chester?
It's the movement between quarters, how it makes it look odd. If you look at the dilutive effect for the nine months, it's a lot smaller.
It's a, it's a sort of quarter-over-quarter presentation thing. I'm sure, I'm sure Chester will be delighted to take you through it in more detail, Ernie. I think it's hilarious, you asking that question in, in this forum.
Even quarter-over-quarter, you still only have 19 million shares, no matter what quarter you take.
Chester-
Yes, that's correct.
Chester.
Fifteen one.
Chester, I don't believe it's an error. I'm confident that Chester can take you through it on a sort of detailed calculation basis. I don't think he's able to do it sort of quite off the cuff like this, but he can do-
Why don't you send me a note?
Yeah.
The second, do I understand correctly that by putting Bilboes on care and maintenance, you're gonna save $800,000 a month or $9.6 million a year, pre-tax?
That's correct, yes.
Wow, that's $0.45 a share after tax. That's a lot.
Yeah, that's why we're doing it. Well, Bill, put it the other way around, Ernie. It was unsustainable. Cash flow was unsustainable, and we had to stop.
That's all right. As for the proposed sale of the solar plant, will you pay more in rate to the buyer than your costs now?
No.
No. Okay.
The reason... It's just purely their cost of funding is quite lower than ours, hence they could pay more.
Oh.
It's purely, that's all it is, Ernie.
Oh, that explains it. Finally, and because at Bilboes, the ore that you thought was there, is not there, is there a way for you to claw back some of the, the price of the transaction?
No, because... Well, actually, Victor, Victor is the vendor. He's on this call. And I think that would be... Victor, can we claw some money back from you for the oxide?
Howie!
Yes.
Most of the ore is actually transitional. What we thought was oxide is transitional. And in the original plan, we were always going to mine the ore. But the issue was, when we do the pre-treating for the sulfide project, that's when we were going to mine the ore. So basically, it will come almost like a free ore, in the sense that the mining cost, the waste treating, they are already gone by the sulfide project. That's how it was going to contribute. So that ore is still there. We've mined some areas, okay. Some areas, we didn't quite get the ore, but most of the transitional ore, or what we thought was oxide, is actually transitional, so it is there.
The other ore, is it oxide or sulfide? I forget which is which.
Sulfide.
The sulfides, obviously between the oxides and the sulfides, you normally get a transitional zone. So it's that transitional ore, transitional ore from the transitional zone, you can't really process it as oxide, and your recoveries will be poor. But when you actually do the sulfide project, we're able to process that by blending it together with the sulfide in certain proportions so that you get maximum recovery out of it.
Okay. The main ore body, as to the main ore body, does that have what you think is 4 or 5 million ounces?
It's got 2.5, 2.5 M&I. Another 500,000 that's inferred. But it's fair to say, it's fair to say there is exploration potential, but we're not pursuing that at this stage.
3+ at this time?
Yeah, but as M&I and I. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay, fair. Thank you all.
Okay. Thank you, Ernie.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks.
We've got a few written questions. So the first one is: How do you expect Bilboes and the Tarka sites to add to total revenue and profit for the next five years?
...Well, it depends very much. There'll be, it's impossible. Well, on Motapa, I think it's unlikely Motapa will start production in the next five years. I don't know. Bilboes, that depends entirely on whether we go for a big bang approach or a phase approach. Until we have that answer, it's just pretty short. I just can't answer that question until we've got a clearer route on commercialization. But I mean, it's fair to say, when we bought Bilboes, we worked on the basis of a big bang approach. And we could still do that, but we're looking to optimize the assumptions from those which we used when we bought it. So we're looking at a further improvement. Not...
There's nothing wrong with the project as it currently stands with a big project approach. We're trying to find something that's better than that. So, I can't translate what—I can't answer that question in terms of dollars revenue. I just want to go back to that comment I made earlier on about our approach to capital allocations. We're trying to find a smarter way to commercialize this asset, which balances growth and minimizes dilution for the benefit of shareholders, not chasing revenue.
Okay. Next question is: Can you talk through the rough expenditure on Bilboes' various feasibility studies? And could you go through any planned exploration programs at the various sites?
So just read that again. I couldn't... Just read that again.
Can you talk through the rough expenditure on Bilboes' various feasibility studies?
Okay. Victor, what's the cost of a feasibility study?
Okay. The work which we are doing now, probably to get to Feasibility Study, we'll probably spend something, I think just in the budget, we put something just under $5 million.
Right, Victor.
Yeah.
Okay. And that's a very broad... It includes an awful lot of it covers many areas, doesn't it? It's quite a complex project, so it does cover many areas. Do you want to talk a little about it?
Yeah, it does cover many areas in the sense that the way we're looking at it, in terms of a phased approach, it will be purely a new project at the end of the day. You have to do new designs and things like that. So unlike where we looked at the bigger project, we still look at the bigger project to see whether we can fund it. So there's an update on the cost. And also, in the last few months, as we've been looking at it, there are a lot of areas which we already identified as areas for optimization. So that's the kind of work we, which we're doing. Optimization in terms of various work streams and also in terms of maybe managing the capital expenditure.
Do you want to go into a bit more detail on those various work streams?
Okay. I'll just pick a few. For instance, the big one where we're expecting to make quite a big saving on capital, would have been about the tailings facility, for instance. In terms of how we construct it, and also taking a phased approach, which then reduces our peak capital funding when we start the project. So that's a big one. We expect it to be quite a big one. Plus, also, if we go with a smaller project, obviously, we'll go with a smaller tailings facility, also in a phased way, so that will reduce the CapEx. And then, from a mining point of view, the way the pits have been designed, obviously by managing the way you do your waste stripping when you start, we do expect to reduce maybe the capital expenditure at the beginning.
These are the major work streams which are going on. We've also looked at the issue of electricity. If we are doing the big project, for instance, we'll have to build a new, a new power line, which is about, 75 km. But we are having to look at that. If we do the smaller project, we're doing some work to see whether the existing line can actually be upgraded or can actually take the amount of power which we will need. We're working very closely with the power utility, the Zimbabwe power utility on that. I think those are obviously the other issues, maybe the contractor who will be doing the mining.
We're looking at optimizing that in the sense that, if that contractor is also mobilized to do the tailings facility, for instance, we only pay one mobilization fee and things like that. His workshops, we'll have to look at his workshops. So there are many areas which we're working on at the moment, and we're quite optimistic in terms of, maybe coming up with, a better capital estimate for this project, and also better operating costs for the project.
Okay. So let's, Camilla, anything else?
Yeah, there is. What are your thoughts on near-term future CapEx in 2019, 2020? We obviously thought that was going to go down, and CapEx is roughly doing the amount of operating cash flows. Do we expect that to decline, free cash flow to increase, and a larger dividend?
No, we're going to. We do expect CapEx to go down, but I think to increase the dividend in the context of a very substantial investment program would be... I can't see how we could possibly justify that. But no, we would expect CapEx to come down and therefore free cash flow to go up. But I can't, at this stage, envision the dividend going up, given the fact we've got a large and as yet unquantified CapEx program coming towards us.
and then there's one more which says: When will the current recovery at Bilboes oxide be completed?
Victor, we've said at the end of this quarter. I mean, if that's right, is it? The end of this quarter? It doesn't trickle on into the... I've got to say, first of all, let's be clear, we're not talking material amounts of gold here, okay? So let's put it in context. Victor, my understanding was that we thought that the continuing heap leach would go for quarter four and then not into next year. Is that correct?
It should really end at the end of the year. Unless if the recoveries are showing still if they're showing that we can recover any more gold. But I mean, that has to be balanced with the cost of doing it.
Of course. Yeah. Yeah. But I really would encourage you not to start focusing on the heap leaching from the offsites. That really is going to be doing in the least. Any further questions?
Yeah, this one was just coming in. How is the South African rand affecting your supply costs, especially with fuel and materials?
No, it's not. I mean, Chester can probably talk about this better, but the South African suppliers typically charge us in rands, but at a see-through dollar price. And so we, we're not... And you'll notice actually in the cost analysis that Chester put up, we've not seen any increase in our consumable input costs, which I'm very pleased to see. So the simple answer is that we are not, that the rand is not having an effect at all.
There's one more. Do you plan to increase the spend on exploration at Blanket?
Not substantially. I mean, the cost of the exploration program at Blanket isn't particularly significant. It's more constrained by logistical, just get drilling, excavating the drill coverage and working there. It's not particularly expensive, a program. And we're very comfortable that the results we've seen so far and the results that we're expecting to see through the ongoing exercise will give a very substantial uplift in resource base and life of mine. For us to go...
The other exploration area that we could, and we do plan to do in due course at Blanket, will be along strike to the north and the south, and also to the east, about 800 meters to the east on the Boundary Ironstone Formation. But again, we've got many competing needs for capital and, you know, there's a limit to how much cash we can spend. So it's not that we've got a unlimited amount of money to spend. So at the moment, we're comfortable that the exploration activity at Blanket is more than fit for purpose. And I think the other area we've had to spend a lot of money at Blanket, it's not direct on exploration, it's related.
It is upgrading of the IT systems and the software packages that we're using in the MRM department, which has actually paid dividends. It's very expensive, but it's paid dividends in terms of improving and making much more real time our mine planning system, which means that we can adapt to changing circumstances as we see them. And actually, that we are expecting will probably crystallize in a modest reduction in some of the capital programs that we have planned for 2024, which now using the better mine planning software we've got, may mean that we actually don't need to do some of the stuff that we thought we would do. So that is paying for itself.
So I guess quite a long answer to a fairly short question, but I hope that answers it properly.
Any more questions?
Okay. Shall we just give a pause to see if anybody else wants to... Just a minute or so, see if anybody else wants to ask any further questions. Victor or Chester, have any final observations you'd like to make based on the questions that we've received and my attempted answers?
Not from me, Mark. Thank you.
Okay. Chester?
From me. No.
Okay. No more questions, Camilla?
Nothing else, no.
Okay. Well, thank you all for attending, and we'll, we'll do this again when we publish our next quarterly results, which will be towards the end of March. The Q4 numbers take a bit longer because the auditors get involved. Okay. Thank you. Thank you all for attending. Thank you very much.