Anita Soni: All right. So you do have opportunities. Could you just quantify like what Cardinal could potentially add to the fold?
William Lytle: No, I can’t really quantify because we’re right in the middle of doing that as far as our budget season, so it would be a bit premature. But I will tell you that we are looking at how does Cardinal fit in? Are there additional ways to mine Cardinal in advance rate while we wait, all those things are on the table.
Anita Soni: And then I just wanted to ask about Otjikoto. Could you just tell me what the levels of the stockpiles are? I don’t think I have that anywhere. So that you will be — that you’ll be processing once the underground and the open pit ore mined out in tons and grade if you have it?
William Lytle: Yes. I don’t have it in tones and grade. , maybe you know — now I’m speaking just from memory, and I’ll correct myself if it’s wrong. But I know we have more than 10 million tones on the stockpile and I believe it’s at 0.404 grams.
Anita Soni: So you still want to–
Unidentified Company Representative: Sorry, answer to your question.
Anita Soni: So I was just wondering on the mill, did you want to continue to run it at the current levels if you were when you’re processing the stockpiles?
Clive Johnson: Before we get to that I think at the end of the mine, Anita, I think there’ll be close to 20 million tones of low grade sort of in the 0.44 to 0.48 gram per ton range. It’s kind of a blend of low grade and mid-grade. So that’s kind of where we’ll be at the end of the mine life. So definitely 6 to 7 years of throughput available there to supplement with underground at the end of the open pit life. Can we talk about the mill, I think Anita is asking about would be?
William Lytle: Yes. So we have looked at what we, in fact, bring the mill back down. And the answer is we can, but we don’t necessarily have to. Right now, the current life of mine shows us continuing to operate in that kind of 2.5 million to 3 million tones per annum and making a profit. It does require us, as you heard Clive indicate or Mike indicate, we’re going to have to retrench all of the open pit workers, and we’re going to have to bring our costs down. But it is profitable at those grades, and that’s what the economics show for the next through 2031.
Anita Soni: And can you just remind me what the close liability on it is in 10 years from now or 7 years?
Clive Johnson: Well, I guess we’ve recorded — probably I don’t have the exact number, probably will inflate itself up to somewhere more like 20 million by the time we’re done.
William Lytle: Yes. And remembering that because the open pit is closing next year, we’ve already started concurrent reclamation. So a lot of the waste dumps are already under reclamation right now.
Operator: The next question comes from Carey MacRury with Canaccord Genuity.
Carey MacRury: Maybe just a follow-up on Fekola. Was the original plan before the delays on the regional for Fekola to kind of be in that 600,000 ounce range next year? I guess my question is, were there the regional should we be expecting production to be down at Fekola or was that expected to be growth at Fekola?
William Lytle: Yes. So the answer is yes, production will have to be less. But you have to — if you go back, I think you really need to go back to kind of the technical studies we had when we put out our last technical report. It did show ’24 is a down year, right? So we always projected maybe less than 600, but it will be whatever we’re going to produce and whatever we get in the regional stuff for 2024. So it will be down.
Carey MacRury: And now that you’re back in the high grade, can you give a sense of what sort of grades we should be expecting for Q4 at Fekola?
William Lytle: Yes, I think it’s plus 2 grams. But Carey, you could calculate it, if you just look at what our range was and where we’re at and you could do the calculation because we’re saying we’re going to be kind of at the lower end of our range.
Operator: The next question comes from Don DeMarco with National Bank Financial.
Don DeMarco: Maybe I’ll start off with Goose. Bill, you talked about the ice road and so the ice road is going to start in early September. You’re waiting for it to be cold enough. Can you give us an idea of what specifically what kind of temperatures their sustained temperatures you’re looking for before you can start?
William Lytle: No. What I can tell you is that we’re looking for ice thicknesses, right? So basically, I think, once again, I hear up there, you want to start out with like a 1 meter thick of ice, then you can start dragging some of your containers up. And then as you get — as it continues to freeze, it gets to heat sometimes in excess of 2 meters, that’s when you can bring your heavier loads up in. And you said September, but it’s actually will probably start in December on the Tundra, which freezes first and work our way out towards the water sources.
Don DeMarco: So I mean, it sounds like the team is ready to go right now on site. And so you’re just basically measuring ice thicknesses or kind of waiting for the sort of green light to go ahead? You said you’re targeting early December, just to clarify to start?
William Lytle: Yes. Well, that’s right. So basically, the team will be put into place early December, that they’ve obviously got to make sure that all the equipment is operating. As I said, we’ve already done a full maintenance on it, but we’ve got to identify right now in the process of identifying which containers are going to come up first, loads, weights, all that stuff is happening at MLA right now. So that’s kind of the early stuff we’re working on right now.
