George Burns: Cosmos, maybe I’ll answer it, just some of the high-level implications on Olympias results and Joe can speak to the operational. For Olympias, number one, I would say the infrastructure improvements we’ve put in place are a game changer for us. But some of the volatility on Olympias has to do with external markets. We got hit with that payability issue a year ago. We’ve been clawing some of that back by finding other customers where we avoid the VAT. And even within China now, we avoid VAT at times in that some of the contractors pay for it in order to get that concentrate. So, we’ve got clawed back some of that. Zinc metal price is down quite a bit and that’s had a material impact on the byproduct credit value that we get.
And then overall, we were late getting that infrastructure that was completed in Q2. We had planned on getting that up in Q1. So, that had a cascading impact on the quarter. So, I would say at a high-level, some of these external factors just add volatility to Olympias and I think you will see some of that continue. But overall, what we are doing on the ground with the things we have control, we’re much better positioned now. And Joe, you can add anything you want to that.
Joe Dick: No, I think you covered it pretty well, George. Cosmos, the only thing that I would add is that as we go into 2020 — complete 2023 and 2024, we anticipate continued improvement in our underground operations, and we’re running into a point where mine and mill are pretty evenly matched. So, there will be kind of a period going forward where a bit of work will be required in the mill to take advantage of additional production from underground. So, we’ll keep you apprised of that as we move along, but likely to see a bit of melty bottlenecking in 2024.
Operator: Our next question comes from Carey MacRury of Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
Carey MacRury: Just wondering about Kisladag, 3.6 million tons is a huge uptick in tons stacked. Obviously the north heap leach pad is open and you’ve got the bigger gear in there. Just wondering how we should think about that rates on a go forward basis?
Joe Dick: Go ahead, Simon.
Simon Hille: Hi, Carey. Thanks for the question. Yes, I think that rate is what we are planning moving forward. That’s what we’ve been sort of alluding to with the bigger materials handling equipment that we have now available. The only caveat to that would be the summer months are our best stacking and availability months, just due to weather effects. Typically, we do see a small impact from the colder months, which we really factor into our plan for Q1. But beyond that, we expect to be at those type of rates for the majority of the year.
George Burns: I might just supplement that. If you kind of look backwards over the Kisladag Life. It was a pretty consistent performer with a number of expansions over time. And really what happened beginning of last year, we started agglomerating the ore on the conveyor belts. And that causes some pretty big challenges, particularly last winter, and essentially it was because we were adding essentially cement to the conveyors to do binding of the fines to support the high-pressure grinding roll and that caused plugging and clogging of the transfer points between conveyors. So, I mean our production dropped off as a result of that challenge. And as Simon said, by putting in these larger conveyors and the larger stacking equipment, that impact is not going to hit us going forward, but we will see some seasonal impacts.
Whenever we get a lot of rain, or particularly in the winter, it’s tougher to get the same tonnage as you do when you got blue sky and great weather. So, the run rate you saw in Q3, I think, is a good assumption going forward. We’ll obviously be trying to push the open pit and the circuit for more tons. But I’d say, the bigger opportunity and upside is actually in the agglomeration and how fine we crush the ore, how much gold we expose and how effectively we can rinse that gold out of the pressed heap leach pad. That’s going to be our focus going forward. That’s probably our opportunity going forward as well.
