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3:19 the sort of demand for metals increasing, especially going into greener energy, specifically related to copper as a standout and also zinc to a degree. Our portfolio includes base metals and gold. So we're kind of covering all bases at the moment. But another element might be the geographical spread. You will see that we're exploring for gold in Japan, copper in Africa and zinc in Idaho in the US. But that's a lot driven by the availability of prospective trains and opportunities. So I think you have to look at that geographical spread these days. No, fair enough, Absolutely. Chris, what about you?
4:04 Yeah, I mean, I'm literally going to shoot from the hip here. So maybe 2 things that jumped up in my mind, the one certainly latching onto what Brian said, and that's the challenge to find the right level of human capital to drive these projects forward. It's one thing getting the resource, et cetera, it's ultimately delivering those projects and doing it on time, on budget, et cetera. And what's interesting with a lot more industries now getting a lot more impetus under the current economic circumstances, certainly draws on the available labour. Being in Australia and seeing how out of favour mining is, specifically when it comes to youngsters coming to university, etc., it's certainly going to become quite a challenge. However, that thing once again creates opportunity for people abroad to move there and augment that industry. We certainly felt that in WA up to recently with the COVID restrictions.
5:00 I think the other thing that's also really interesting, insofar as this is concerned, is the drive for technology and technological improvement, and also business improvement. So I think there's a huge gap in the availability of proven technology, insofar as improving efficiencies and reducing energy intensity for these operations. So I think the opportunity there is for organizations to really put their line on the water and really drive specific technologies to help industry towards that because it's not getting easier and demand is going up. We need to do the best we can with what we have. Absolutely. Thank you for that, Chris. And Rick, what are your thoughts?
5:46 I think, not to repeat what's already been said, but clearly whether you're talking about Copper or Gold, the grades of the big mines are all declining. There are some new mines in the Congo specifically that have very, very, very good grades. But in general, it's the other end of the spectrum for most of the big porphyry deposits that produce a lion's share of the Copper. And it's similar with Gold. All the big near-surface gold deposits have already been found and a bunch still aren't developed because of lack of infrastructure and lack of power. And when we're seeing this current inflationary wave hit us and projects that are at a feasibility study a year ago or so are now suddenly 20-30% more expensive inside of a year and we're not seeing anything in the data to say it's going to lighten up anytime soon. So these are all big challenges for the industry, but they're all, as I think Chris was pointing out, it's also where the opportunities are.
6:58 I think supply chain is going to start becoming something that everybody is going to get very familiar with. I think that's a good thing for the mining industry because people think energy comes out of a wall socket and their iPhone is made by Steve Jobs and he does a wonderful job. I think this whole supply chain discussion is coming home to roost and I think a lot more people and hopefully the students that are in university, We just met with about 30 of them here in Anchorage from the University of Virginia and who are all in business and they're all interested in understanding this whole thing about mining because they see it as controversial.
7:45 I like the supply chain angle and getting people to think about where stuff comes from. Thank you for that, Rick. I think that was a great start to today's panel. I'd like to go back around the room again, talking about the catalysts that you're all looking forward to this year with your own specific companies. So Rick, I'll hand things right back to you. What catalyst is it that you're excited about? What are you looking forward to? I think there's 2 main catalysts. We have a very simple project. We're not building a mill and we're not building a tailings facility. So that really takes a lot of risk off the table, if you will, both in terms of capital and permitting risk specifically. So the 2 main catalysts we're looking to this year are completing the feasibility study, which we expect in the second half of the year, and completing the permitting process for what does still need to be permitted, which is basically just an open pit quarry mine.
8:39 Again, we're not building a tailings facility. So, from our permitting standpoint, it's a pretty simple project. So, those are our 2 big catalysts. They're really simple, but because we have a pretty simple plan, it's actually going fairly fast and not going to cost huge amounts of dollars. And we look forward to updating our investors, mostly in the second half of the year. We expect both of those to come to fruition in the second half of the year. Thanks, Rick. What about you, Chris? What catalysts are you looking forward to? Yeah, I think we're going into a very interesting year. We're slowly but surely moving forward with our growth strategy and I think there's probably a few things we're looking forward to. Firstly, is demonstrating unlocking early cash flow from our main open pit by delving a little bit deeper in what we call main pit deeps, which will see our open pit grade increase from currently about 0.6g per tonne, moving up towards 2.5g per tonne, which will make a significant difference, given that's 45% of our total feed to our mill.
9:49 The second thing, ramping up our underground mill from 835,000t last year to 1 million tonnes per year run right at the end of this year. A very important catalyst for us is announcing our latest resource and reserve statement. We did not bring one out in 2020. We're really excited about where that's going and we'll be releasing that in the next few weeks. Then, of course, I think on a continuous basis, just our exploration update and also furthering our pre-feasibility study on the main pit pushback, which will give us, currently on PEA level, about 360,000 ounces over 6 years. So it's a significant project that we're undertaking at the moment. Thanks Chris. Over to you, John.
10:37 Yeah, I mean, for us, that's pretty straightforward at the moment. And it's been a frustrating couple of months for us not being able to get our drilling going in Japan due to COVID travel restrictions. We hope to get that drilling going now in April. We've all got various visa applications in progress, as also our driller, Energold. Some of our peers and competitors, 2 other companies really, have been getting encouraging results out of that terrain, which kind of highlights the importance there. But for some technical drilling reasons, especially at Kato, there's a lot of alteration that's been seen in historical drilling there around the high-grade cause to that mineralisation.
11:30 So we had to be very patient. Probably you should thank our investors for their patience on that. But getting the right equipment and using the right equipment is going to be key. We didn't want to go down the same problem situation. So we're well equipped. And now We've got a brand new rig on site and that should be spinning here in April. And then I think the efficiencies of that will give us some good intersections and we'll start building back the interest in that exploration in Japan. Thanks, John. And finally, back over to you, Brian. Yeah, thanks, Cam. Look, with GFT, there's really 2 aspects to our business. One of those is focused in the US with our partners, G11 Technologies and the others as a major explorer and landholder in Timmins.
12:22 When we think about our catalyst for the year, the first one, which I would happily say we published a press release on yesterday, relates to our progress on in-situ mining technology for Gold. With our partner, G11, what we're trying to do is adapt Uranium and Copper technology and bring it to the Gold space. This does require a number of steps, both in cyanide replacement technology and understanding what it means to adapt that technology into a Gold system. What we published yesterday was an initial metallurgical test work on non-cyanide based recovery and that was very encouraging. We saw recoveries that are just as good or stronger than cyanide. And we saw it on whole core analysis, which means just simply dunking the piece of core in a solution and actually achieving reasonable recoveries out of it. So with progress from that, we're advancing through the next stages of test work and metallurgical work with our partners in the US. I expect to see large-diameter core drilling and further met testing throughout the year as we advance towards a 5-spot well test, hopefully in 2023.
13:27 GFG is leveraged through that, through an option agreement and through our partner, Group 11 Technologies at the Rattlesnake Hills project. I think that's a key driver for us. The other half of our business is related to mineral exploration in Timmins, where we hold 800 square kilometres. Wind us back to last year, we put another land position together and started drilling on it. We had an exceptionally good drill result here and already published in January here, 26m at just less than 5g. We have a number of assays pending from that, which we believe will be relevant catalyst to the market. Certainly something I look forward to. And we also have a drill active turning directly following up on that. So we feel there's strong potential to grow the Timmins portfolio into a resource of formidable size. We are an exceptionally large landholder with about 800 square kilometers in the Timmins belt.
14:16 And we're well financed. So those are the 2 key pillars of Catalysts that we're really excited about with TFG this year. Wonderful, well, thank you. Now that we've gotten introduced, we've talked about each of your companies as well as the environment that we find ourselves in these days. Let's dive into some of the questions that have been coming in over the last 2 days of the conference, and also address any questions that come in live. I'll remind everyone in the audience that you can ask questions using the Q&A tab found on the right-hand side of your screen at any time. But to begin with, let's go over to Superior Gold. Question that came in during the conference, why is the AISC so high? Yeah, I think I can answer it from 2 vantage points. The first one is the current oil interstate and cost. If you look at what our cost was in the fourth quarter of 2020 and where it was in the fourth quarter of 2021, we basically reduced that cost by almost $270 per ounce in US dollars terms.
15:13 That shows 2 things. Firstly, that costs are definitely coming down and it's volume related. And the second thing is that where we currently sit, last year I think it was $1,470 an ounce. There's still a lot of fuel in the tank to reduce that cost further. In essence, what's driving our cost up is this is a 150,000oz installation. It's got more than 3Mt per annum milling capacity and we're running at 1.55Mt. So we're not even at half our capacity when we look at further de-bottlenecking opportunities. So that's one of the drivers. The other driver, of course, is the underground mine certainly has a lot more optionality to increase our throughput. And we've seen it on a month, you know, months where we really had good months from the underground, delivery from the underground, seeing that cost reducing significantly.
16:06 This year, we're seeing our cost dropping from the underground on a unit basis by about 10% year on year. So that'll give us some benefits going forward. The second vantage point that I would like to talk about is the oil sustaining cost in our guidance, which is $1,450 at the bottom. And if you compare it to where we are, where we were in Q4 at $1,417 an ounce, you know, the question is, Why is it so high? Well, if you followed the news in specific in Australia, and we live with it every day, WA to a large extent was a bubble in a bubble, therefore very limited and restricted flow of people in and out of the state, really just sitting on its own and running the mining industry out of Perth to a large extent.
16:51 What we are seeing now on the 3rd of March when the borders basically dropped off, we saw a significant increase in COVID cases being reported. Now, The benefit we have is that everyone in the mining industry has to be double vaccinated and we're now moving to being triple vaccinated, which will help us if someone does contract COVID, which is inevitable, that the recovery period is a lot shorter. We've taken a conservative view insofar as the impact that it might have not only on inflation, the value chain and logistics, but also on our operations. And that's why we pitched the number of $1,450. Thanks for that, Chris. Question for John. When is BMEL starting drilling at the Kaizen project in Japan? Yeah, we should start drilling, as I mentioned earlier, in April. That's certainly our target.
17:42 At Kato specifically, which is a more advanced project, really based on the fact that there was a significant amount of historical drilling completed there by the Japanese state agency back in the 1990s. And in more recent times, the private company Kazan that we acquired in April last year, also completed a number of holes. But as I mentioned, you know, weren't really able to get through the high grade core to that mineralization, which, you know, A number of people involved in our team, specifically people like Tom Garrigan on the board of directors of B Metals had similar experiences while they were exploring the cupol deposit.
18:30 And the message is to keep at it because those alteration systems, especially when they're large, can be a reflection on the grade and the widths of the gold mineralization that we have seen there historically. So that's the good news. We should be drilling there with the right equipment during April. And that will be a real sort of a real important moment for the company. Well, fair enough. Thanks, John. We have a question for the whole group coming in from Mark. Do you have the impression that current cost inflation in the sector is a one-time surge, or do you think that the trend is going to continue through 2022? I'll let whoever wants to answer that first go ahead.
19:17 I can answer that. I think it's baked in already and we're seeing it in action. Whether it's fuel prices, I'm up here in Alaska and a year ago we were paying $350 a gallon or 2, and now we're paying $550. That's all very real and on the ground. You see projects that have feasibility studies that are a year old, and maybe they're starting to build, or they're half built, and they've got to update their capital and they're coming in 20, 30% higher just on a sort of a 1 year to 2 year timeframe from when their last estimate was. So it's here, it's not gonna, When things cost more, they never then cost less. So I've never seen capital numbers go down for a project in my career. So It's here to stay.
20:16 We just hope it doesn't keep increasing month after month after month. You need good fiscal policy to address that. The Fed is starting to take some measures. It's a pretty volatile world out there when we have 1 country invading another and other big countries sitting on the sidelines. And it's been very volatile last few months for sure, on top of all the COVID stuff we've been dealing with for the last 2 years. So markets are confused right now to say the least. I would just add something to that. I do agree, Rick, that we rarely make back the what you've lost 1 year in terms of margin.
21:04 I think a challenge we could see moving forward is that this labor challenge isn't going away and it is going to get worse. And so when I think of the follow through that and how it relates to our productivity, how it relates to our margins, and you layer in what is still a lasting COVID impact. I do have concern that although diesel, gas, steel, explosives might already be at a very elevated pressure or price point, and hopefully they've stabilized. I think the labor piece has, may run further. And if there's any place that my concern rests, it's specifically in that and how it impacts our productivity manpower availability, and in the end, how that drives margins too. So I'm concerned that still has a way to play out and depending on each of our companies, how we build that into our forecasts.
21:58 Absolutely. John, Chris, do either of you have any further thoughts to elaborate on the question? I mean, from our side, the biggest near-term impact of that is really directly on drilling costs, as we're currently more in an exploration phase at the moment. But certainly, as Rick mentioned earlier, what we see on the more advanced projects that we evaluate on a regular basis, there is that need to update your internal financial models for those projects because of especially fuel costs. And that same fuel cost is obviously going to be a factor on drilling costs going forward and potentially staffing as well. You know, geologists for some of the reasons we mentioned, you know, at the start of this session, really, that skilled professionals in the mining industry getting more and more scarce, so there's gonna be inflationary pressure there, for sure, on staffing as well.
23:02 Yeah, I think if I can add 1 or 2 things, the one thing is certainly access to the right people to execute on these projects. But I think there's another part to inflation here that I think will play out. And it kind of links to the fact that access to skills is really challenging, but projects are taking longer. You know, you're seeing unit rates going up, and in the past usually unit rates would go up, but you know, you try and pull it back by shortening the period, getting projects up and running quicker to try and alleviate that. But you're being confronted on both things, both on availability of people and the cost of materials and people, and on the other end, things are just taking longer. So that for me is one thing that's certainly playing out. And I think there's a long way to go before things would stabilise. And I agree with both Brian and Rick, you're probably not going to see any changes for the better in so far as costs are concerned. So therefore, and it goes back to my previous comment, I think the mining industry as a whole needs to really latch on to technology and understand and define what are those key technologies for a specific business that you have to back, You have to develop, you have to take a crack at these technologies.
24:20 If we're not going to redefine the way we run our businesses and the technologies we use, at the end of the day, we're just going to become way too expensive to stand as an organisation. Well, fair enough. Thank you all for the great answers and the great insights as well. Mark has a question for Rick though. He says he loves the story, but trading volume is an issue for him. You know, though tight handed holders are a good thing. Do you have a strategy to make the stock trading a bit more retail friendly? Yeah, no, it's a fair point. We're part of that strategy. And we do have a strategy. And part of that was getting ourselves listed on the New York Stock Exchange, which took place last November.
25:07 We were previously just OTC and on the OTC we were trading hundreds of shares a day and now we're trading thousands. It's an improvement. We've got a ways to go. And, you know, we do have a strategy to bring more retail investors into the story by participating in forums like this. I'll be participating in the Swiss mining forum next week. And I've got 60 meetings lined up with, I think, mostly high net worth family offices, mostly out of Europe. So it takes time to build that, you know, retail shareholder base. This has been a friends and family finance company. It's nice to have friends and family, but when we only have 6.7 million shares outstanding and I can literally make 10 phone calls and have probably 75% of those, we do definitely have some work ahead of us. So, I mean, the good news is we've got a good strong share price.
26:11 We can raise capital. Again, being on the NYSE really makes us a lot more accessible for institutional investment. So yeah, be patient, we're getting there and we've got lots of dollars to spend this year on our projects and we are talking about inflation so that it'll whatever it was it'll be more but I also believe that you know we see also see the same thing for us and the gold price is going up as well and as is the copper price and the zinc price and so I think we'll maintain our margins when we get our project into production in 2024. Fair enough. Thank you, Rick. Question for GFG Resources, Brian.
26:59 In the last 6-months, your stock has gone up more than 40%. Can you talk to us about what the upside potential is for shareholders here? Coming off the bottom never feels very good, but you know, look, we've traded flat for generally 12 months. I do think we've gone through a period where catalysts were relatively static and we were working hard in the background, both at Rattlesnake Hills and in Timmins in terms of our CorpDev side and partnerships and various technical work behind the scenes. That started to bear fruit in Q4 with the acquisition we did there and it's borne more fruit in Q1 here. I personally view that the aberration we're seeing now will be a low and in the not too distant future. And I think the trends are right. Happy to break out from a pattern which was maybe a market cap of $20M to $25M.
27:50 I do think we have formidable catalysts that will vault us to the next level and see us $50M plus or minus and moving up in the next 3 to 6-months. It all has to do with material catalysts. And I think what we've put forth is great news. I think our shareholders have seen that and we can certainly plan to continue to deliver a catalyst that will build on that momentum. Thanks, Brian. Question for you, Chris, in Superior Gold. Mark is asking, previous management has missed quarterly production targets. So what's changed that allows confidence in current production guidance? Well, I think there's a number of fronts where we targeted to improve the business, and it really starts with the people.
28:41 We've really strengthened in 2 areas, quite significantly. 1 on the geology side, and We were very fortunate in acquiring one of the previously senior geologists out of Barrick. He knows platonic from 15, 20-years ago. He's made huge inroads in our understanding of the ore body. Part and parcel of our strategy was to ensure that we try and achieve an average of above 3g per tonne from the spokes. Through the work that he's led over the last 18-months, we've been quite successful in that and that's made a material change for our business. We continue to see that playing out going forward, so that gives us one level of confidence. The second is, when I joined, we started off what we call an opportunity review, and it's really taking all the opportunities that Tamara, my predecessor, put on the table to literally work through them in a systematic manner and understanding what comes third, what comes second, what comes third. And that's enabled us to sequence more specifically our open pits effectively.
29:49 One of the stories, of course, Main Pit Deeps, which was never on the radar screen, the engineers came up with a way how we could access there and that makes a material change to this year. We are also looking at a number of improvements or improved designs of the fleet of open pits that will come after Main Pit Deeps. And then parallel to that, in 2 to 3 years, hopefully we'll get the Main Pit Deeps in operation, which will give us significant ounces in cash flow at much lower cost than what we currently see. So I think it's ultimately culminating in having the right people doing proper analysis and then sequencing is critical for our business. Great, thank you, Chris.
30:35 John, Bmittel's shares are currently trading near the 52-week low level. So how are you and Insider supporting the market and what catalysts can we expect this year now? That last 0.5 we've already addressed, but if you'd like to elaborate, please do so. Yeah, sure. We've got a good insider group, very strong backers. Clark Johnson, President and CEO of B2Gold, has been buying in the market in the recent weeks, which sends a good message to the market, as myself and other members of the relatively small management team. And also, you know, we've got a good cornerstone investment followers from groups like Hayward, for example, that have benefited over the years in the success of companies such as Bima Gold and B2 Gold.
31:31 And as you'll see in our sort of marketing story, we see B Metals as being the third company coming out of that same stable of cornerstone investors and directors and senior management. So, you know, that's the main thing. And as you said, the market has had to be relatively patient with us because of the unique situations in not being able to get that drill going in Japan. But we've got over that hurdle now, we think, and that patience will be rewarded as we get that drilling moving forward on Kato and other projects that we have completed work on with our team in Japan that certainly moving up the priorities of the 5 properties we do have there.
32:22 So within 6 months time, we think we'll be in really good shape and we'll have much more news flow. Also bearing in mind that we'll still be continuing with our copper exploration in the Zambian copper belts where we have coincidentally Jogmec as technical and investing partners on that project. And with the copper price where it is now, we could really see some interest in that project as a standalone in any event. Thank you for that, John. A question back over to you, Rick. What's the 2022 exploration budget for the 100% owned projects you have? Yeah, sure. So Lucky Shot sort of stands out as probably where we have the biggest dollar commitment on our 100% owned projects. So it's basically a $10 million budget over an 18 month period of time.
33:17 We're right now underground, refurbishing the underground and getting, get the refurbished about 1500 feet of the existing underground and then extended about 7 or 800 feet towards the foot wall of the Lucky shot vein. And basically we'll just drill the down dip extension of the vein when we get the tunnel in the right place, we'll drift parallel to the vein and then just drill the heck out of it. So that's a $10M program. We have a modest program on our other early stage projects, collectively about 1 million dollars between getting boots on the ground, mostly at Shamrock. We're pretty excited about what we found there last year. We staked that project last year, so it was open ground. So that'll be where the lion's share of the work will be done this year.
34:05 Unfortunately, we won't be able to drill our ZZZ project because we're still waiting for the federal government to transfer the land title to the state. And the state won't give us permits to drill until they finalize that land transfer. And of course, on our joint venture project with Kinross at Montreux, we have a $25.6 million budget approved. And so our share there is about $6.7 million. So that's, in total, it's about $17 million of exploration work we'll have in this year. Wow. Great, Thank you, Rick. Question for GFG Resources. Could you elaborate on the recent metallurgical results that you've just released And could you walk us through what they mean? Yeah, this goes back to a comment from Chris earlier, and it really relates to what we're doing to change how our industry works on an R&D front or looking at deposits differently. And What we're trying to do in Rattlesnake Hills is adapt in NCG mining technology to Gold.
35:07 Everybody knows you wouldn't dare do it with Cyanide. Our partners, Group 11, set up a private company. What we published here were, I think, very, very encouraging recoveries. We took a suite of samples across an oxide gold deposit, from sulphide through to oxides. It showed anywhere from 20% to 80% recoveries on whole core samples. This was not related to any crushing and this was not using cyanide. To me, this is really quite groundbreaking in the sense that if we can look at non-cyanide based extraction and open up the realm of a system that might be in situ in terms of an op-cost and capital cost perspective.
35:54 We definitely have an angle that could be very, very revolutionary to the space. And it's why we partnered with G11 back last July, because we thought their concept was quite unique and their vision and the technical capacity behind them gave them a reasonable chance to success. So they're taking the technical horsepower of pioneers in the in-situ uranium industry and they've paired it with chemists that are developing cyanide replacement technology that they have under patent now. And what we're trying to do in Wyoming, and we're doing it in Wyoming, is because Wyoming has a healthy in-situ Uranium space. So we're moving towards an in-situ test for Gold. The framework and the testing we've done, just released yesterday, was just exceptionally encouraging to show that even a whole core analysis, the penetration rates, the permeabilities, the recoveries, and yes, it's still early stage, we're very, very encouraging. So, yeah, that's a bit of a glimpse of what we think it means.
36:57 The world could be full of deposits that are marginalised because of grade profiles, permitting profiles, capital hurdles. And if a new technology like this can come to light, it certainly can change how our industry works. And it could remove a lot of the challenges that we have. And we're talking about today, personnel challenges, cost structure challenges, explosives, operating costs. But what if we could just mine it in situ? How would that change how this industry works? And it would truly revolutionize the space. So That's what we're trying to do. We're a long ways from proving it. And it always comes in individual steps. But I think what we published yesterday was our first step along that path. So we're very excited by it. That's great to hear. Question for the whole group now.
37:43 With COVID restrictions lifting, What impact, if any, do you see it having on the industry? Leap in as you have thoughts on that. Sorry, who was that for? Any of you. Brian, if you want to field that one, go ahead. Yeah, look, the COVID space is an exceptional challenge for all of us. I'm involved at a board level for a producer as well as the exploration I run. I know it had a direct impact on production last year and this year. It's resulted in extensive turnover, extensive absenteeism and the list goes on and on and on. It's been a huge challenge to manage at the producer level. As an explorer, it's definitely had a much more muted impact.
38:30 We can still execute our programs, we can still travel somewhat reasonably. And I can say from a budgetary impact, it's been non-material. So I think there's a few different ways to view it. I don't think it's still gonna be a problem moving forward. And the concern is really that it becomes endemic, fine, where does it go next? And does it revert back to being pandemic at some point? And that's something we all hope it doesn't, but virology and biology will probably surprise us all. So I'll let my peers talk as well. Yeah, maybe I can comment a little bit, you know, what our experience is in Australia.
39:16 And that's where 99% of our employees come from. Certainly if I look back when WA was really tightly locked down, there was basically no interstate travelling into WA because you had to isolate 2 weeks, and when you go out, you have to isolate 2 weeks. So, it was really difficult for people. Needless to say that the pool of people that we draw our resources from, the human resources from, just much smaller than typically it used to be. I think looking forward, certainly on the upside, being able to, you know, with international travel now allowed, potentially we can bring in international, you know, specialist employees, etc. Or, you know, even getting people into state to move to WA. So on a micro level, certainly I think it's going to be better, but it's going to take some time. There's no doubt that Australia as a whole, probably not so bad on the East coast, but definitely on the West coast, they still have to go through the peak of Omicron before things will start settling down. So, and what was also interesting, what we're seeing in industry is that because WA was so isolated, and COVID not really a big issue, Now that it's coming, we find that the general employee really struggles with dealing with even the much lighter restrictions than what were in place elsewhere, specifically on site. So people are, I guess,
40:48 still getting used to understanding how this is going to impact their lives going forward. What does it mean if you have any symptoms you immediately get isolated on site and there's a whole host of tests that you need to go through and heaven behold, if you tested positive, you're locked down for 7 days before you move. So, it's a significant impact on people's psyche, on people's family life, on their work life and of course on the industry. So, I see that still ramping up over the next, I guess, 2 to 3 months before we'll start seeing a positive trend, if Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland has anything to go on. But I think the opportunity for us is to start putting some lines on the water in so far as specific skills that we can recruit from abroad.
41:39 Because some of these skills are really scarce in Australia. Maybe I'll just add, we're here in Alaska, we've been fairly open for quite a while. We got things, I think, under control fairly quickly here and we're, you know, lots of little isolated communities. It did shut down exploration in 2020. Most people, you know, because of the seasonality and you've got to get your program underway and we really weren't prepared for the protocols that we needed to put in place. I think a lot of people just shut down their program in 2020. Sorry, in 2021 we had a fair bit of exploration activity, but what we saw was you got your drilling done, you sent your samples off and they went into a big black hole because you didn't get your results back for 6 months. You're not alone.
42:37 No, everybody's in this boat worldwide. And it's not because we don't have geochemists, because we don't have people to put rocks in a jaw crusher. Because we governments paid them to sit at home and they got used to that. So hopefully in 2022 with the lifting of the restrictions, the assay labs can get their business plans together and get results back out to folks like us. It's really tough to talk to investors about that hole you drilled 6-months ago that you were really excited about. By the time you get to talk about it, it's, well, what are you doing next year?
43:27 Hopefully, we see the timelines for the turnaround time for assays, you know, get back to 6 weeks rather than 6 months. Yeah, I think from our side, you know, while we have a fair geographical spread of projects at this point in time. We really didn't miss a beat really on our exploration in Zambia and Idaho, because we had local teams, independent, And we managed to work through with various protocols put in place. We didn't really slow up our exploration in those 2 jurisdictions. And our team out in Japan were able to sort of redeploy and bring some of our other projects up towards drill ready status now by doing various amounts of surface work like at our Todoroki property, for example.
44:27 And so that's been good. Specifically, obviously that technical decision we took, strategy decision to sort of delay our drilling in Japan because of the need to get that Pacific new rig, larger drill rig and mud recirculation kit in country and working for us. But other than that, COVID didn't really affect us too much because of some good local established teams in the region. Absolutely. Well, thank you for those great insights. On a slightly lighter note, what's the thing that most investors are surprised to learn about each of your stories? I'd like to go around the room here. Maybe, Chris, maybe you could start. Is there anything that investors find surprising to learn about Superior?
45:16 Yes. I think if you look back in the recent past, Superior Gold unfortunately didn't imbue it with any praise. There's been a number of 0.25, unfortunately, because of the challenging technical environment we are operating in, whereby quarterly guidance were not met for a number of 0.25 and needless to say the market responded by to large extent turning his back on us so I think what I'm what I'm hearing from from investors and bankers and so forth, good to see the turnaround. We've got 1.75 of hitting guidance. We're showing consistent increase in our production, reducing costs.
46:02 And there's still some concerns, as you can imagine. And hopefully, you know, when we get our resource and reserves taken out, that will lay some of the fears that that's been floating around. But then, you know, I think it's at that point where it's, you know, show it's sustainable. So that's a challenge we have. And I think when people hear about what projects we have lined up specifically for this year and how that starts to unfold into 2023, more and more people are taking notice and I think it's represented in the response to our stock. So hopefully that will continue as we keep on delivering what we said we're going to do. Absolutely. What about you, Brian? To continue on the light theme, I would say GFG originated as GIF from God.
46:51 That was the acronym that we originated our name on. It was from Jonathan in Hebrew. But when we think about it a little more serious now, one of the things I'm quite proud of is that we have an exceptionally large and growing retail base. And when we wind ourselves back to the start of COVID and travel and even the junior space, we looked at our marketing business plan and we really did focus on the retail side and push our portfolio of stories out through things like 6 is a Platform, social media marketing and what it's done is attract pretty large and in some places very strong retail following and what that's done for our company is it's been able to maintain a strong share price and outperform many of our peers through what is a lag in the investor, sort of large-scale investor fund side of the business, particularly for the junior space. So it's something I'm quite proud of is something we've pushed really hard on that side. We've pushed with our angle of research and development with our partners, G11, and we've managed to make that relevant to a group of new shareholders over the last 12 and 24 months. And that's no small part due to our head of IR, Martha Page, who does a great job on this sort of thing. So that's kind of a unique piece of OTFG, I think.
48:06 Fair enough. Thanks, Brian. What about you, John? What about B Metals? Yeah, I think the thing that catches people's imagination with us is as we've really only now started to ratchet up our marketing, is the interest in the Japan Gold exploration. Many people, even in the mining business, possibly not so aware that Japan had the pedigree of high-grade gold mines that it has. Some people have heard about Hishikari, which is still in production, which was commonly known as that and still is one of the world's highest-grade gold producers. But when you start digging a bit deeper, there's a plethora of projects in that 1Moz to 2Moz range at high-grade.
48:52 It's something a bit new. There's only really 2 other companies which have the backing of Barrick and Newmont, respectively, and ourselves with B2Gold as a strategic backer and investor. So that really catches the imagination. And I think the potential in the other terrains that we're working in, such as the Zambian Copper Belt, where we're exploring in these covered areas, which are covered extensions of terrains that have really delivered world-class deposits. So that's an interesting mix of projects, a spread of commodities at the moment. As we see the company going forward, obviously there is an opportunity we might change that structure. But for the next short term, we feel very comfortable in incubating both the gold and the base metals in the same company.
49:44 And the sort of breadth of experience we have in our board of directors and management team that allow that to happen efficiently. Great, John. Over to you, Rick. Yes, I think for us it's great. We have a saying in the business that the grade is king. And I think most people are surprised to sort of realize that the Manchur project itself will be one of the highest grade open pit coal mines in the world and delivering 6 gram material to the Fort Knox mill. So, which is 10 times the grade that is currently going through the Fort Knox mill. Our project, albeit small scale, will basically double the output of Gold of the Fort Knox mill. It's a 45,000 ton a day mill.
50:34 So, they typically would run sort of 10 to 12 million tons of Fort Knox ore through that. We run 1 million ton of 6g and you've doubled the throughput and output of that mill. On top of that, Fort Knox has heap leaves, about 120,000oz of heap leaves. The addition of Manchota to Fort Knox makes Fort Knox a tier 1 gold producer in North America, which is a pretty coveted asset. Obviously, it's very important for Ken Ross, which is why Ken Ross is pushing pedal to the metal here and to get this thing feasibility done, get the permitting done. Since we don't have to build a whole lot, it can happen fairly quick and fairly low risk execution plan.
51:25 So I think grade is the thing that most people are surprised about, but it's a surprise obviously to the upside when you can get bragging rights for having one of the highest-grade open-pit Gold mines in the world. Listen, as we begin to wrap up for the day, I'd like to go around the room just once more. If an investor could walk away on just one thing about your story, what would it be for each of you? Rick, I'm going to pass things right back to you. I'd say it's a high quality project with low execution risk, again, because we're not building a mill in a tailing facility, so we don't have to capitalize that. We're still going to be, what we do have, we still have capital costs, but they're, you know, we'll be inflating from a base of, say, $130 million, not, you know, not $630 million.
52:18 So we won't be immune to inflationary pressures. But the level of execution risk here is very, very small because we're not building a whole lot. We're using existing infrastructure. And whenever you can do that, obviously, it's a lot lower risk profile. Absolutely. John, what about you and B-Metals? I think it will be that we've kept a very lean and mean team, good experience, but we really focused on keeping our overheads to absolute minimum, getting that investment, those hard-earned exploration dollars, getting them into the ground on the projects themselves. And good quality projects, which is kind of a prerequisite.
53:07 And if you have to spread yourself a little bit over the globe to do that, that creates the opportunity, actually. And then that sort of wider depth of experience, having V2 as a strategic investor and a wider sort of board and management team with that depth of experience that have delivered great value to investors through 2 companies. And we see ourselves as being the third one coming out of that same stable. No, thanks for that, John. Chris, you and Superior Gold. Yeah, absolutely, thank you very much. I think firstly, we operate in WA in Australia, that's a tier 1 jurisdiction, and it's probably one of the darling areas of Gold mining, definitely in Australia and probably in the world.
53:53 We're generating cash, we're investing back into the business and we ultimately see our cost dropping already. And we have a clear line of sight to see that dropping even further. And there's no doubt that it is, although the mine is 30-years-old, there's significant areas on our properties that's been under-explored. And our ability to convert from 100% remnant mining to 30% remnant mining in 12-months, I think it's worth notable. We're getting into new areas, we're reducing our reliance on remnant mining. That's really the future of the underground mine and also where we're going to get the high grade. And I think at the end of the day, we have a really strong growth story. We've got a lot of latent capacity.
54:38 There's a lot of tenements around our property up to 150km radius without milling capacity. So it kind of makes strategic sense to look at these options and see how we can turn that into cash flow. Great. Brian, you start us off, give you the opportunity to finish it out for us. Yeah, look, GFG's already announced exceptionally high-grade and bulk tonnage virtual results from Timmins, and I'm optimistic we can translate that into a relevant scale resource in a very infrastructure-rich area. I just think that's a rare opportunity. When you pair it with what we're trying to do with our partners, G11 and the in-situ angle, that can truly revolutionize all of our jobs in the gold mining space as a whole. So I think GFT is an exceedingly unique company that offers a lot of levers to return value for shareholders. And thanks to yourselves for putting on a great show. Hey, well, thank you. And thank each of you for coming on today. That is all the time that we have as we begin to wrap up properly. I'd like to thank everyone for joining us in the audience, especially those who participated by asking questions.
55:44 As a reminder, If you'd like to book a meeting with any of the speakers you see here now, or throughout the rest of the conference, you can do so using the link sticky to the top of the chat. You can also be found on our site by going to the conference page and navigating to the meetings tab. Join us again for the next breakout session starting tomorrow at 11am Eastern. Thank you and we look forward to seeing you there.
