Doug Reddy: That is something that we have been doing over the last few years at Los Filos. When we have an opportunity, we take some of the older material, especially if it’s higher-grade material that’s been crushed and fully leached, we do look at turning it, but when we turn it, we add lime to it and then it gives another good pulse of gold out of it. A little bit more difficult to do at Mesquite because it’s one big large pad and it is something we always talk about is how to deal with that and given the sheer height of that pad, which does cause us to have a longer it’s not the lead cycle, it’s the cycle of solution going through that pad. And Castle Mountain is a much smaller pad. We would consider anything that works on other pads, we would consider that for Castle Mountain as well. But Filos is the one where we already are doing that.
Rhylin Bailie: I’ll take a quick question from one of our analysts online. Just wondering if Orion is responsible for continuation of their CapEx spend until the transaction closes?
Greg Smith: No, the economic cut off was April 30.
Operator: The next question comes from Kerry Smith of Haywood Securities.
Kerry Smith: A couple of questions. Firstly, for Peter, you say you spent the $1.3 billion on a 100% basis on the project as of March 31, how much more would there be to spend? Or I guess another way to say it is, what will the final CapEx number be? Or is that the final number?
Peter Hardie: It’s close to the final number, Kerry. Right now, the spend is really more on working capital. We’re imminently pouring gold. I think we’ve said in the past, we expect the operation to achieve cash flow neutrality fairly quickly after it starts pouring gold. So, we’re seeing and the construction has been principally complete since late last year. So, yes, we think we’re right near the end here.
Kerry Smith: And maybe for Doug, on Tatajuba, you are going to have this gap where you won’t have any tonne coming any ore tonne coming out of, the main Tatajuba open pit and you’re going to be accessing Orange, Tatajuba. What is the grade door like? Can you deliver a similar amount of ounces per month from Tatajuba or will there be a production decline on a monthly basis because the plants maxed out and the grade from Tatajuba is 20% less or whatever the number is?
Doug Reddy: Tonne wise, we’ve done the plan so that we can take up the feed to the plant. That’s not an issue. I mean, Scott’s far more cognizant of the work we’ve been doing at Tatajuba, but overall on the resource reserve side. So I’ll let him speak to that.
Scott Heffernan: Sure. So you’re right, Kerry, the grade is lower on average at Tatajuba than in Piaba proper. But the ore zone does daylight and right now the equipments in that upper lateral saprolite zone where you have collapse and distribution of grade over much broader area. So, not much, we’re right into ore, Tatajuba is exposed now with having been cleared and mining is underway.
Kerry Smith: So Doug, you’re kind of expecting you can push plant a little bit and kind of keep the monthly production in ounces kind of similar from either or Piaba?
Doug Reddy: That’s what we’re looking at. Yes. I mean, we did put in a pebble crusher, which has been fully commissioned, but that for Tatajuba that has no bearing. It just gives us the opportunity when we start to get back into fresh material, whether it be the Piaba underground. So in the meantime, Tatajuba is just it’s a waste, it’s so much softer and allows us to be able to operate at an high throughput.
Kerry Smith: And you talked about this internal evaluation on Castle Mountain Phase 1, when would that be finished?
Doug Reddy: We’ve been working it through with different scenarios during the first part of this quarter. I think we’ll continue to be working that through for the rest of Q2, probably have some conclusions in Q3. And that’s kind of our normal business planning cycle overall for leading into our mine plans that go into the budget cycle. So, it’s a natural cadence for us.
Kerry Smith: And then on the discussions with the 3 communities at Los Filos, as long as you’re making would it be fair to say that as long as you’re making progress in those discussions that you don’t have a definitive end date where you say, if we don’t have an agreement by the end of the year, we’re done and we’re going to shut down or would you continue to just keep going as long as you’re making progress?
Doug Reddy: We continue to have the dialogue with all 3 communities. The dialogue is going very well. Obviously, we have overall timing when it comes to operating the mine, as we’ve said efficiently, given that heap leach is not the way to go, we want to transition over to CIL. But in regards to the specifics of timing and everything, I think that’s something that I can’t really get into because that’s part of the dialogue. It is a conversation. It’s not, it’s driven by working together jointly on this.
Kerry Smith: But would it be fair to assume that you’ll continue the dialogue at least for the rest of 2024 then and there’s no risk that you would move to shut it down this year or very low risk?
Doug Reddy: We have a mine plan through 2024.
Kerry Smith: And on the hedging that you have to put on for the new $500 million loan, you said that would be over the next 36 months to mid-2026. Will that be equal by quarter, Peter? Or how might that hedge be added?
Peter Hardie: Yes. We’re reviewing that strategy, and haven’t decided on it yet. There’s different options, including the one you’re referring to of doing a straight line hedge. We may move some more of the hedge upfront, but we haven’t decided that fully. Once we have decided it, we’ll let everybody know what we did.
