A Strong Finish to 2021, and Further Growth Forecast for 2022

0:08 Hello everyone, and welcome to Superior Gold's live investment summit today, hosted by 6. Today I'm joined by President and Chief Executive Officer Chris Jordan, as well as the company's CFO, Paul Olmsted. Chris and Paul are going to walk us through a company presentation and after we'll move on to a live Q&A session where we'll be accepting questions. You can submit your questions using the Q&A panel found on the right hand side of your screen at any time today. As always, this summit is being recorded and will be available to watch afterwards on SIX.com. So without further ado, Chris, I'm going to hand things over to you. Thank you very much and good day everyone. Thank you for joining me to get an update on Superior Gold and thank you for hosting us today. As a reminder, please refer to slide 2 in our presentation which is posted on our website to view our cautionary language regarding forward-looking statements.

0:53 Also note that the dollar amounts in this presentation are in US dollars unless otherwise stated. Go to the next slide. Just talking a little bit about the world-class gold mine that we have. So Superior Gold is a TSX-V listed gold producer that owns 100% of the platonic gold operations located in the middle of Western Australia. The platonic gold operations include the underground gold mine, Hermes open pit projects and 80% interest in the Briar Basin joint venture and now the platonic main pit pushback project, which I will allude to a little bit later in the presentation. We hold a large prospective land package along the Platonic Miramaya gold belt with several other gold deposits in close proximity to our existing infrastructure which is a very important strategic position for the business.

1:45 Moving on to the next slide specific around the investment highlights. So Platonic is situated in one of the top mining jurisdictions in the world, according to the Fraser Institute. It's a world-class operating mine and originally run for a number of years by Barrick, Northern Starn and ultimately Superior Gold, and it's got a large already implemented related infrastructure. The business has a clear and concise optimisation and expansion plan, and I'm looking forward to sharing with you a little bit where we are on this journey and what's lying ahead for our business. And it's endowed with significant mineral resource base with definitely exploration upside. Finally, one of the most compelling attributes is the re-rate opportunity we represent compared to our peers.

2:31 In order to achieve a re-rate, our strategies to deliver firstly, a safe and stable predictable operation through a high performance team, backed by simple processes and systems and a clear pipeline of improvement opportunities that are effectively and efficiently executed. And operation of the scale producing an excess of 150,000 ounces per annum by increasing all production profile from the underground, our open pit, and other sources to fully utilize the latent capacity. Firstly, which is the one mill, which is in care and maintenance of 1.2 million tons per annum of milling capacity, and then our current operating mill, which has a capacity of 1.8 million tons operating at about 1.55 million tons per annum at the moment. A reduction in costs and then of course improved cash flow and from there strengthening our balance sheet will be consequences of extending our production profile.

3:28 Invest smartly in exploration of known high potential targets. We've consistently over the last few quarters made available our exploration results and it certainly shows a lot of promise. And in fact, we've moved forward into mining into new areas in this financial year. But I'll speak about that a little bit later as well. Moving on to the next slide. We hold over 644 square kilometers of prospective land along the platonic Miramai Gold Belt with several other gold deposits in close proximity to our existing infrastructure. And this is a very important strategic advantage for expansion, not only using our own properties and our own mineral endowment, but also being able to look at properties outside of our property.

4:18 From an infrastructure perspective, this slide is a plan view of the platonic underground mine showing the location of the past producing open pits, tailings facilities and the extensive underground development shown in the light grey lines and other related infrastructure. A very important element of our business is our growth strategy. Moving on to that slide, you can see this talks about achieving 3 goals. The first one, establishing safe and reliable and stable operations. The second goal is moving the business to an operational scale, which is 100,000 and 150,000 ounces per year. And then lastly, of course, smart exploration.

5:04 So phase 1 is designed to, as I said, to deliver a safe and stable operation. And we believe that over the last few quarters, and I'll get to that in the slide a little bit later, we've been able to establish an operation which can consistently deliver between the 70 and 85,000 ounces per year. In fact, we've achieved an annualized rate of about 83,000 ounces in Q4 of last year. This has improved our cash position. I'm going to show you what those numbers look like a little bit later. In addition to that, phase 2 and 3, which is part of achieving goal 2, we'd like to move the business to a different level of operation, a much larger scale, moving up to initially 100,000 ounces with the current mill and then adding on to that additional ore supply, whether it's internal to our own operation or external, to take it up to 150,000 ounces.

5:58 Phase 4 basically feeds into achieving our third goal. And that is making sure that we explore the known high potential target areas on our property. There is a potential for a new discovery. And as we invest in exploration of platonic, we've certainly been very encouraged by our recent drilling results now, and that we have a drill rig, a third drill rig on the property dedicated to opening new mining fronts. In fact, if you look at FY21, we were mining at 100% remnant mining. We're planning to mine 70% remnant mining in FY22 and mining 30% of the ore supply from the underground mine from new areas. And that is testimony to the work and exploration work that was done over the last few months. From a sustainability and diversity perspective, we committed to mining responsibly and developing a diverse workforce as we further enhance elements of an ESG strategy. For example, our workforce comprises of people from all across the world.

7:01 In addition, we utilise an international ecosystem of specialists, especially when it comes to technically complex matters to drive innovation. Also, very importantly, over the past 2 years, Plutonic has actively increased engagement with the Djiddi Djiddi and the Djin Djerana groups who are the historical landowners of the areas we operate and explore in. Appropriate agreements have been established and we continue to develop these further, setting clear terms of engagement on the land. Moving on to the next slide, which talks to our guidance. The important thing here is to see that our production guidance has increased quite significantly. Where last year it was between 65,000 and 75,000 ounces, this year it's between 80,000 and 90,000 ounces.

7:55 From our production report, we produced 77,000 ounces in FY22, which surpassed our guidance that we put out initially. So we're very excited about the results we achieved there. And you can see here clearly that we're now moving in from locking in goal 1, moving into achieving goal 2, and more specifically phase 1, to edge our production up towards 100,000 ounces. I will now also expand on our development of our underground mine, which is and will remain the mainstay of our supply, especially for the 1.8 million tonnes per annum mill. So going on to the next slide around that talks to on the underground optimisation. We currently focused on unlocking the value in the underground through production growth, margin optimisation and systematic exploration. Now the first and foremost here is making sure that our average stope grade is higher than 3 grams a tonne and we've been very happy to report that we in fact have been successful in achieving that.

8:59 In mining operations we've revitalized underground fleet and will continue to do so as we also look at increasing the production from the underground mine specifically in FY22. In FY21 we produced 835 000 ounces of stope and development ore from the underground mine and we are now targeting to move that up to 900,000 tons delivered for FY22 and looking at an exit rate of 1 million tons per annum from the underground. At the mill which operates very well, the recommissioning of the gravity circuit last year continues to bring value to the business, and our recovery has increased quite significantly from the low 80s and now moving to the mid and higher 80s.

9:46 Finally, the addition of a third underground drill rig that is dedicated to the expanding into new mining fronts has resulted in some very promising results recently, which I will discuss in more detail. Moving on to the next slide, I'm more specifically looking at what has happened over the last few quarters on production as well as our financial position. I'd like to draw your attention to the second quarter of FY20, And you can see there at an annualized rate of about 60,000 ounces per year, our cash position was really under pressure and our balance sheet quite weak. We have over the last few quarters changed this profile by targeting a number of key strategies and has ended up at a really good production, something we're very proud of, at about 83,000 ounces annualized in Q4 and delivering 77,000 ounces in FY21.

10:50 We've seen this steady improvement impact our financial cash position and you can see there that our net cash position has increased from circa $9 million in the second quarter of FY20 to now 23.8 million US dollars. I think the important thing here is we would like to see the business build further on this platform that we've achieved. And you can also see there, when you look back at the strategy, that we've in fact now locked in goal 1, and now we are in a position to move to achieving the second goal, which is to take the business to that 100,000 ounces of delivery. Moving on to the next slide, a key element of increased production, specifically as we move into achieving our second goal and the phase 1 there, is making sure that we unlock the full potential of our open pits. Now we have access to a number of historically operating open pits. And we started, if I remember correctly, right about May last year in unlocking the value in Plutonic East open pit. We've also subsequently finished there and moved on to Perch, which is currently being mined. And we're very excited to report that our initial studies has proven up an early entry option into the main pit, which we call Main Pit Deeps, which will be the mainstay of the open pit feed into this financial year.

12:20 Moving on to the next slide, I'm more specifically talking about the main pit pushback. First thing that I would like to say is that the initial early entry into the main pit, which we call main pit deeps, in no way negatively affects the resource and reserve in the current open, but insofar as the MainPit pushback is concerned. In essence, what that is, is just drawing some cash flow earlier into the process whilst we firming up and completing the project for the main but pushback. A bit of background there in December 2020, we announced the initial positive results of the platonic main but pushback PEA. A quick reminder that all amounts in this slide are in Australian dollars unless otherwise indicated but key to to highlight here we're looking at about 60,000 ounces of gold per year over 6 years which talks to about 357,000 ounces that we expect to mine out of the main pit pushback.

13:19 It's a low life of mine all in sustaining cost of $863. Now, this is very early stage of assessment. Needless to say, there's a lot of work we still need to do. About 80% of this resource is

13:36 in inferred and therefore quite a significant piece of drilling that needs to be done to get it into a measured and indicated or indicated and measured so we can get a much better understanding of exactly what we can expect from the main pit pushback. Now this project will probably run over the next 18 to 24 months before we enter into the main pit pushback project. Moving on to low cost expansion potential and this is really to give the audience some sense of what the latent capacity is. Now I already spoke about the 1.8 million tons per annum mill which is the first one in that table that you can see there and typically at 2 grams a ton average feed into that mill 98,000 ounces of gold will be up for grabs on an annualized basis.

14:27 If we were to secure the ore for the second mill, that could jump up to 153,000 ounces. So this would be the overall target as per goal 2 that I've identified earlier in this presentation. From an exploration perspective, the next slide highlights many of the high-grade ore results that we've intersected since acquiring platonic. It's clear that platonic is a very large underexplored mineralised system and has a lot of opportunity to further extend its mine life. So we've started off with historic step out drilling. This slide is reminded that there are significant intercepts in close proximity and this is a very important input in defining exactly where we want to go for our further exploration work. The key here that's worth mentioning is that our exploration spend in FY21 was to the tune of about $40 pounds produced. We're looking forward to spend between $90 and $100 this year.

15:31 In our exploration, as we move into a position where we better understand the spatial positioning of the ore in the underground and therefore expect a much more improved hit rate of the exploration work that we're planning for FY22. The exploration work will not only be underground and ensuring that we develop our new mining fronts, but also moving to looking at targets on the surface, more specifically around Hermes South, as well as towards platonic east on our own operation. On the next slide, in the near term, our focus in the underground is in exploring and developing into new mining fronts, as I said before.

16:17 We believe that 2 new mining fronts, being the Western Mining Front and Baltic Gap, will be key in improving the profitability of this operation in the near term. In addition, we've also identified another area called Indian access, which is an area which in the past was identified as an area that does not hold any significant gold. Our interpretation thereof and subsequent drill program has in fact indicated the contrary. So therefore, that will also become a mining front for our operations into the future. So we've already announced the drilling results from these areas and we look forward to presenting this further drill results as we're proceeding. In FY22 we're planning a exploration draw drive, specifically in the Western mining front, to get us closer to that new load so we can better understand and also shore up the resource and reserve in that area for future mining operations.

17:20 That automatically leads into increasing our reserves and resources. And what you can see here is that our total resource talks to about 5 million ounces and our reserve of almost 400,000 ounces, I think it's about 380 is the actual number that's rounded off on the table. The key here is recognising that there's quite a disparate relationship between our resource and our reserve. And there's a lot of technical work going on in the background as we speak, as we prepare and finalise the revised resource and reserve statement. We hope to make that available at the end of Q1 of FY22. And we also hope to see more ore or more ounces that's identified in the resource moving into the reserve categorization.

18:11 That of course will have a significant impact on our life of mine. And then moving on to some of the upcoming catalysts. I think it's very important here that we've completed our full potential assessment, and I've alluded to that a little bit earlier insofar as our latent capacity in our mills. We've also in 2021 completed our heritage surveys, specifically for the platonic main pit pushback. For FY22, further exploration updates and sub grabs are already referred to the life of mine and resource and reserve statement. The key element here is making sure that our resource and reserve is the number that we can back. There's a verification and validation process currently underway.

19:00 And as I said before, we hope to make available the new resource and reserve statement towards the end of this quarter in 2022. We'll also proceed with the main pit pre-feasibility study. This is the main pit pushback. As I said before, there's quite a significant piece of work that we need to complete before we'll announce exactly what and when that specific operation will start playing a role in Orfeet for our business. On the next slide, just talking a little bit about the capital structure, I'm going to hand over to our CFO, Paul Olmsted, to take you through the recent changes and also a bit more insight as to what this slide provides. Sure, thanks Chris. So just looking at our capital structure, we're currently sitting at about 123 million shares outstanding.

19:53 We also have some acquisition warrants of 14.4 million. Those were issued at the time of the IPO in February 2017.

20:05 They have a term of less than a month left with an exercise price of around $2 Canadian. So, you know, I would, you know, barring a significant move in the share price, I would expect those to expire on exercise. So I think our share position will tighten up a little bit in terms of the capital structure. Also a number of the options, of the 8.7 million options outstanding, a number of those will also expire, barring an increase in the share price at about the same time as the warrants. So around the 17th, 18th of February, both the warrants and a number of those options will disappear.

20:55 So our market cap at this point, we're sitting at about 93 million Canadian with cash as Chris mentioned of 23.8 million US. So our cash position is roughly 30% of our total market cap at this point. So that covers our capital structure. In terms of brokerage, We do have a number of analysts that do cover us, a pretty good blanketing of the brokerages with a target price of $1.21. So certainly

21:32 a potential re-rating available to the shareholders if we can achieve that target price. From an ownership perspective, we do have a pretty good shareholding of top key shareholders and the management of the board is currently sitting at about 2.6 million, or 2.6%. So we do have, you know, certainly the incentive is aligned with the shareholders. So I think that kind of covers that slide, Chris, I'll hand it back to you. Yeah, thank you very much. Let's move on to the next slide, which I think is the last slide of the presentation. Yeah, I think Very important just to remind the audience of our strategy. Our growth strategy is very simple, very straightforward.

22:22 It is in essence making sure that we unlock the full potential of our own operation from our own ore resources, but also then looking across the fence for other potential ore source and feed. The fundamental consideration here is within 150km radius from where we're operating and our mill is situated. And I want to remind everyone of the 1.2 million tons of milling capacity just sitting there. We have, you know, a number of gold deposits in that radius, which unfortunately do not have any milling capacity. And needless to say, putting in new milling capacity is profusely expensive.

23:09 It makes absolute sense to look at these potential properties, to look at options of toll treatment, joint ventures, and potential just the acquisition of those assets to augment the ore feed into our business. That goes hand in hand with the fact that we will continue spending on exploration as we unlock the full potential of our ore body. Ultimately, the first prize would be that we fill our mills with ore from our own property, but at the end of the day, it's also recognising our strategic positioning and being able to bring that value to bear as well. This strategy is going to take a bit of time to roll out. 1, for instance, I mentioned the main pit pushback, which will take another 18 to 24 months, But we're very encouraged with the fact that we can comfortably say that we've achieved goal 1.

24:06 We now firmly have phase 1 of goal 2 in our targets. And as I said, our guidance production for FY22 is between 80,000oz and 90,000oz. We're going to push as hard as we can to try and get as close as possible to 100,000oz. I think what's worthwhile noting here is that we are taking a significant shutdown in Q1 of this year, which will make Q1 at a lower production that we typically achieved in the last 0.75. However, we expect to hit 100,000 oz per year run rate in the second half of this financial year, which will set us up very well for FY23 as we solidify achieving phase 1 of goal 2.

25:01 Hand in hand with that, we will continue our consideration of options around our property insofar as providing additional ore for the lighting capacity in our mills. I'd like to thank everyone. So I'd like to hand over to the host. Absolutely. Well, thank you for that great presentation, gentlemen. We'll be entering the Q&A session now. I'd like to remind everyone in the audience that you can ask questions using the Q&A chat found on the right-hand side of your screen, although we've already had a number of questions come in, So let's dive right in. Question from Howard in the audience. Do you have any interest in North American assets, which seem much cheaper than Australian ones? Sorry, just repeat that question. Absolutely. Do you have any interest in North American assets, which might seem much cheaper than Australian ones?

25:50 I think there's 2 things, 2 vantage points. I'd like to answer that. From firstly you know, under these circumstances where the gold price is quite strong you know, assets do not come cheap. So, you know, if there's areas where there are assets that are, you know, more cost effective, certainly something that we can consider. We are at this stage operating, as we said, you know, in a first world country, you know, in a top tier jurisdiction. I think the other 2 jurisdictions which stand side by side to the Australian jurisdiction is Canada and America. So certainly that's in the area that I guess we'd be able to look at options into the future. But I'd like to stress very importantly here, our business at this stage is to settle our own business, to deliver on what we say, and also to build that rapport in the market to be able to demonstrate that we deliver what we said we're going to deliver.

26:51 Absolutely. Thank you. Mark would like to know with respect to slide 4 specifically, could you please address timing of each phase generally and how you'd expect the AISC to decline from the 2022 guidance of 1450 to 1600? So just open a slide. Is this slide 4 that's showing at the moment? I've just brought it up for you there. I think it's probably slide 7, the strategy slide. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So just quickly, so goal 1, done and dusted, I think we can tick the box there. We're moving to the 100,000 ounce per year annualized operating rate. We expect to achieve that in this year, which means we could probably tick the box in FY22 for that.

27:42 Then it becomes quite challenging. Firstly, we need to get additional ore to feed the second mill. To that extent, there's a number of things that we're looking at. Firstly, is increasing production from our underground. And as I said, we are really seeing that increase happening this year. And we'd like to see that further increase from 900,000t delivered this year to 1Mt next year, and then ultimately to 1.25t and hopefully 1.5t. The key thing there is, as I said, the life of mine still needs to be updated, that will give us a much better indication as to exactly when we can expect that. And, you know, it's at that point where I guess I'd be able to answer you more granularly. Insofar as our exploration is concerned, that's going, it's consistently going on. It's something that, you know, we will progress with into the future.

28:37 We don't see us pulling back in so far as exploration is concerned. So the other potential opportunities for us to hit that 150,000oz as I said, is to look at all bodies that are available outside of our perimeter.

28:58 Of importance there, We'd be looking at assets that is almost shovel ready, or that can provide appropriate grade that will be able to still cost effectively ensure that we can deliver the ore to the processing plant. So they certainly, the further it goes away, the more expensive it becomes, and therefore, grade is critically important. Exactly when that's gonna happen is difficult to say. What I can say is, we are engaging actively in the market to look at options, and we're looking at various options insofar as JVs are concerned, tolling agreements, and potentially even acquiring assets. So it's work that's currently underway.

29:44 Unfortunately, I won't be able to share with you exactly where that is and when that might come to bear. But what I can confirm is that we're working very hard to see whether those options can be brought to the table. Okay, great. Thank you for that. Another question from the audience member, Can you provide some detail on what type of plant maintenance is being completed this quarter? Yeah, so these mills were built many, many, many years ago, you know, 30 years ago. And typically what we find is that over time the foundations needs to be reset. So we're going to do some work on our foundation of our SAG mill. That is work which is common for mills of that age. We're also using that opportunity, I think it's about a 14 to 16 day shutdown.

30:34 And we're gonna use that opportunity also to do other work on the infrastructure there. The benefit we have is that the water is really of good quality. So corrosion is not an issue at our operation. So primarily the focus would be on the foundation and then of course rotating equipment in our 1.8 million tons per mil. Okay, great. John has 2 questions. So I'm gonna go 1 and then the other, but based on your 2022 guidance, can you give a breakdown of the type of expenditures for the 8 to 10 million non-sustainable expenditures that you have? Paul, do you want to allude to that a little bit better? Sure. As Chris mentioned earlier, We have that third underground drill rig that we're going to continue on this year. So a good portion of that expiration expenditure is a continuation of that underground drill rig.

31:31 But We're also adding in some surface drilling as trying to move forward on the open pit pushback. It's a combination. I don't have the details totally in front of me, but my gut is telling me that it's probably a 60-40 split. So 60% is in the underground and 40% is surface drilling.

32:00 I think an important element there, and I think I did quickly refer to that during the presentation, is that we are planning to put in a drill drive in the Western Mining Front. And the main reason for that is twofold. The one is to get closer to the ore body, specifically in the Western Mining Front, so we can shore up that resource and turn it into a reserve over the foreseeable future. In addition to that, it will also help us to accelerate the development towards those areas. That specific drill drive we could repurpose for mining operations as well. Okay, great. And I'd just like to make sure that my base is covered here. John has a follow-up question. You may have already answered it effectively, but Also from your 2022 guidance, could you provide some more detail on the exploration budget of 7 to 10 million? How much infill versus finding the ore, underground versus above ground, and does this include grade control drilling?

32:57 I think that was the question I was answering the first time. Did I miss the one previous then? Or? Yeah, I think the previous question was related to sustaining capital. Sustaining capital. And what we're gonna spend our money on there. Yep. Okay, so I think we've covered that, the expiration question. So the sustaining capital or the non-sustaining capital question, that's what we've got some work planned there is around an expansion of the tailings dam, we're considering work on the airstrip. We're also considering other items, you know, ventilation, various ventilation upgrades in the underground to improve our structure. So I think it's a number of items, but those kind of really cover the main non-sustaining capital items that are in the budget.

33:46 I think the key element to recognize here is that in 2022, despite these investments, which are all internally financed, we'll still be cash generative after that. So I think the year is well balanced. It took a lot of work to get the budget to this level of understanding and being able to present it in a way whereby it takes cognizance of the fact that we're following a very measured approach to delivering our results and making sure that we're locking them in. So that forms a platform on which we then can launch to the achieving of our following goal. Okay, great. Well, I hope that answers your questions there, John. Another question, have you had any recent engagement with Fango? Yes, we have.

34:37 Okay. Another question is, do you have... I don't know whether that person wants me to elaborate on that. I mean, I think it's a bit of a short answer to an important question. There is a litigation process going on, you know, it's underway. It's not been fully concluded yet. So, you know, we can't really, you know, give all the detail at this stage. We hope to close this process off relatively soon. So, you know, as soon as this is fully concluded, we would expect, if it's material, you know, announce whatever the outcome is to the market. Absolutely, thank you for that. Another question is, do you have any issues with access to adequate water at the mine site?

35:25 No, no, we have 2 things. We're very blessed with the quality of water that we have. And usually operations of this nature are super saline and therefore just wreaks havoc from a corrosion perspective on fixed plant. And in our case, it's not the situation. In addition to that, we got 2 sources on our property that can provide more than adequate water for our process. All right, sounds good. Howard would like to know if you could reiterate what might the cost of a second mill be and What size are you looking for? Yeah, so the second mill is currently installed. It's on care and maintenance. So it was built initially with a 1.8 million tons. It's an oxide ore milling circuit, normal, you know, off the shelf, almost CIL circuit.

36:15 It's got a capacity of 1.2 million tons per annum. As you can expect, there's a bit of capital we need to spend to get it up and going. The current indications, and it's very early indications at a high level, are between $20M and $25M Australian dollars to get it up and going. Now that might sign to the uninformed as a significant number. If you were to replace that mill with a new one it'll cost you way more than double that. So in fact, our entry to the market and getting that mill going and the cost that it will have to incur to be able to get up and running, you know, compares very favorably to any new potential installations that might be considered by other producers.

37:02 Great, thank you for that. Our next question reads, what are the biggest operational challenges that now exist for you? I think there's 2 things. Of course, there's many, but I think there's probably 2 things that's important for me. Firstly, the rate at which we increase the production from the underground mine. Clearly, that's our mainstay of our production. So making sure that we stay ahead from an exploration perspective and we keep on focusing on our development. And you can appreciate as we increase our production from the underground mine, we need to go up the development rate. So I think that's one of the risks that we're watching very closely and managing very tightly.

37:52 At this stage, we've certainly seen an uptick in our development rate and certainly our production rate, and we'd like to continue that into this year and following years. I would say the second major risk would be from a safety perspective. Our safety performance is not at the point at which I'm very comfortable. We started a people safety and risk transformation program late last year, and that'll progress into this year. The main focus there is around safe organizing, safe work. And then a second key element there is around material risk management, which we're now implementing in our business, which previously did not exist.

38:38 Great. Thank you for that. JP in the audience wants to know what the audience should think about the early entry to the main pit. Does this only bring forward some of the ounces included in the main pit pushback PEA? Or will this also include some additional ounces? Well, I think relative to the PEA, it's part of those ounces, that 357,000 ounces that we've already identified in the PEA that we're going to get out of the mine at this early entry. The reason why we went for an early entry was firstly, it provided us an option of access or access to ore, which has already been validated by the government and has gone through all that whole process. So it's literally an area which we previously mined.

39:25 The second thing which is important to that is that the speed at which we can access that ore is far out ways, some of the other options that we have. I think it's important to note, and I'm going to repeat what I said earlier, is that the early entry in no way sterilizes any of the reserves or resources that we've already identified in the main pit pushback. It's just purely a question of, you know, getting cash flow of the open put in earlier. And this opportunity presented itself. We in fact identified 3 target areas, 2 were delimited, and we ended up with MainPitDeeps as the preferred option.

40:16 Okay, great. Thank you for that. Jan in the audience wants to know if you utilize artificial intelligence to track gold in the plutonic underground? Well, if you speak to the geologists, I think they, what they come up with something, sometimes it feels like they're using artificial intelligence because they're fundamentally redefining the way we're interpreting the ore body, the positioning or spatial positioning of the ore. And I say this with pride because the geologists have been able to prove to us that they are getting much more accurate in suggesting where the ore is. And that's important because plutonic in its history, in essence, has mined and delivered around about 50% of its gold outside of its resource, which is quite contrary to what you would typically find in an operation like this. So it just goes to show how complex this all body is. But insofar as dabbling into artificial intelligence, I think no, we don't specifically use that at this moment.

41:26 What we are considering in the future is when the mills are, you know, do become a constraint. You can look at digital twins and so forth in specifically optimizing that operation. So I think that's probably scenes of forthcoming attractions. The key here for us is that there's just so many other, you know, large, low-hanging fruit that we can latch onto. And we need to be selective on what we focus our attention on, because there's just so many things that we can do. But we've got a strategy that clearly shows that where we're going to grow to, we're in the process of finalizing when that's going to happen, specifically moving up to 150, etc. As I said, it's going to be a function of the life of mine.

42:15 And along that way, we will continuously focus on technology that's appropriate for the maturity level of our business. Absolutely. Thank you for that great answer. JP in the audience also wants to know how significant is the increased share of fresh mining fronts for your cost per tonne of underground ore mined? Will you be able to more than compensate underlying cost and inflation in Australian dollars? Yeah, we will be seeing a reduction in cost per tonne from the underground mine as we move into the new mining fronts. I think I said that, you know, 30% of the ore that we're gonna mine from the underground mine in FY22, we expect to come from new areas, sorry. And the balance of that from remnant mining compared to FY21 where we had 100% remnant mining. So some of the benefits that we're gonna see that's contributing to the lower cost is better design of the stopes, larger stopes.

43:17 Therefore, for the townish that we wanna go after, we'll have less stopes, less cycle time or set up time spent on the equipment and therefore more productive time and utilisation of the equipment. That all will contribute to not only more tons, but also lower cost. Great, thank you. John wants to know, are you happy with the results of the heritage survey? Is there anything that could limit the main pit pushback? Yeah, nothing at this stage that I've jumped up, I have to say the relationship we have with the Gingirana Group. Gingirana Group focuses is more in the area where the current operation is, where the GDGD group is a group which is more towards Hermes South. I must say that the relationship is really good. You know, We're in regular communication and engagement with them.

44:08 They are significantly better organised than previously. So, from a similar perspective, we would like to see this relationship strengthen going forward. And we're making very sure that the landowner groups are in fact brought along on the journey insofar as business opportunities are concerned, training, providing work for people of the area. And we slowly but surely seeing those numbers increasing as well. Great. Thank you. Tim wants to know if you could see the underground grade increasing over time. I'd love to see that happening.

44:56 If we look at FY22, it's basically staying flat and varies from month to month, depending on where we mine. What I am encouraged about is specifically look at the Western mining front. We've had some really significant intersections. The important thing now, and that's also what we're putting in the drill drive, is we need to get in there and drill more so we can firm up and recategorize those ore bodies. And that'll give us a much better indication as to what the expected grade would be. So I think it's scenes of forthcoming attractions. The mine certainly provides areas and pockets of very high grade. On the other side, there's areas of low grade. So it is a complex mine.

45:46 But I think as time goes by, we are definitely moving into a position where we better understand our ore body and we would be able to be more selective where we mine. And that might infer that we potentially would be able to access higher grade ore. Absolutely. Jan in the audience wants to know if you've been approached by Sprott or any others for investing in you. Sorry, you broke up there, mate. I heard something about investing. Yes, sorry, Jan in the audience is just wondering if you've been specifically approached by Sprott or others for investing in you. Gee, I don't know whether I can share that information. I think what we've done is just, Chris, is we recently brought on a VP, Investor Relations, and I think part of his role will be reaching out to all potential investors just to get the story out, of which brought maybe one of that group.

46:45 So I don't know if you have anything to add on to that, Chris. Yeah, I think at the end of the day, it's a question of making sure that we get the story out there. You know, have we been specifically approached by a shareholder? I think what we are doing is trying to cover a broad base of investors in the business. I think what we are seeing is certainly an increased interest in the fact that, you know, we've been able to deliver quite good results. And, you know, we're doing so consistently. I think the jury is out in so far as delivering on the next step of our strategy. Another key element is to show a reduction in cost and ultimately also potential adjustment on our reserve statement.

47:35 And I think those are the key elements that would potentially drive further interest in our business. So I think it's probably just a consequence of improved performance that we would in future potentially see more investors flocking to the business. Fair enough, thank you. Bob wants to know how much has the rise in oil price affected your cost? Not really. It has had a small impact on our mobile fleet, which are diesel powered. Our fuel that we use for power generation on site is gas that comes up from the northern part of Western Australia.

48:23 And we've locked in contracts for that supply for the medium term at specific prices. So I think to a large extent we're hedged against any significant change in fuel prices. Great, thank you. Gerda wants to know if there's any ore coming from the open pits currently. Yeah, absolutely. We're mining perch and from there we'll move on to the main pit deeps. We are continuously exploring other options. And if I say exploring, it's a broader sense of exploring is not only drilling. We're looking at past results, we're analyzing it. We're trying to identify areas which make sense for us to do further drilling on. And in fact, there are 3 areas that we've already identified towards the south that we will be drilling up this year.

49:12 Okay, great. And the last question we have currently is, is staffing a challenge, especially with regard to drilling, drilling crews? Sorry. Yeah, well, it's a, it's an interesting question. It's, it's, it's a bit of a revolving wheel, I guess. You know, at this stage, probably our biggest challenge is, is getting in technicians for laboratory, which, which sounds a little bit contrary to where we go and you 1 would expect in the operations itself what we've done was to in fact man up with the expectation that people or access to people is going to be tough. So, you know, that process has helped us a long way specifically over the festive season. In addition to that, we're multi-skilling a number of our people and we are now bringing in people from other industries but it's got the basic skills and the learning ability to be able to be brought up into the operator roles in our business. So that's to the one extent when it comes to people on site.

50:23 In addition to that, we've expanded our ecosystem within which we access technical expertise. One example, for instance, last year around October, when we looked at some of the optimization opportunities for the open pits, there was work happening 24 hours around the clock across the world. We had a team in America, a team in the US, and a team here, sorry, a team in the US, a team in South Africa, and a team here in Australia, trying to get answers out, you know, much quicker. So we're thinking differently about the people that we recruit, not only getting people with mining experience, but people that has that learning ability, and then also manning up in specific areas in anticipation of turnover and people not being available.

51:09 And then, as I said, the third one is really utilizing the ecosystem, specifically when it comes to technically complex challenges that we need to solve. Right, absolutely. We've actually had some questions come in even while you just answered that one. Howard wants to know, what did you pay originally for the second mill on Karen Maintenance? Gee, I don't know. Any insights into that? Well, it was part of the original acquisition, so we didn't really split out what that portion was, but it came as part of the entire package. So the Plutonic mine, the current mill that's in operation, and the second mill that is on care and maintenance was all part of the original package that when we bought Plutonic from Northern Star.

51:59 Okay, Fair enough. Another question, do you hedge the USD with the Australian dollar? No, typically we sell all of our gold in Australian dollars and our costs are in Australian dollars. So, you know, there is a natural hedge there. So, but our financial statements are in US dollars. So any hedging of the US dollar to the Aussie dollar would really be for balance sheet purposes. And at this point, we don't do that. Okay. JP wants to know what percentage of the 3D modeling is completed so far? Sorry, what percentage of the 3D modeling is completed so far?

52:46 So does that refer to the underground block model? I'm not quite sure. JP, if maybe you can provide some greater context, we can come back around to that question. Just out of respect for the person who asked the question, I just want to make sure I get this question right so you know I don't talk gibberish. No absolutely fair enough. We do have another question from Tim. What's the grade of the main pit deeps? Around about 2.5 grams a ton. Yes and we have contacts from JP here. He's referring specifically to the underground block model. Yes, okay. So it's something if I talk too much about it, because I'm really excited about it, because it's really fantastic work that the team has done. So a bit of history, the work started off in May last year when we recognized the block model was challenging and not providing the level of accuracy that we want and reliability.

53:41 So we used LeapFrog as the base software to be able to develop our block model. In addition to that, that helped us in doing what we call form interpolation. And basically what it is, it's just getting a much better understanding of where the ore is in the underground because it's in some areas a very convoluted ore body and very difficult to predict where it is. So that's the technical work that was done. So we completed that work in 2 phases. The first phase was completed at the end of September and the second phase was last year. The second phase was completed at the end of November.

54:28 Now that work needless to say needs to be fed into the mine planning and scheduling process. So that work is currently happening. This specifically talked to Plutonic Underground Mine. Only the Plutonic Underground Mine. There's a phase 3 which we just started off about 2 weeks ago, and that focuses on Plutonic East, which was also an operating underground mine. I think Northernstar shut it down, Paul, help me if I'm wrong here, when they owned Plutonic. So we're going to use the same technology, the same approach to interpolation for that ore body to see what in fact is potentially left and into the future for Platonic East. So a big piece of the work, Plutonic specifically has been completed. Plutonic East, we hope to finish that in March.

55:26 The block model, resource and reserve, life of mine will be based on the work that has been done on Platonic Underground Mine. Okay, great. Thank you so much. That's been a wonderful presentation and an amazing Q&A session, I think, gentlemen. Just remaining cognizant of time, however, I would like to thank not only you for coming on today, but everyone in the audience. If you didn't get a chance to get your questions answered or if you think of 1 after the summit, feel free to reach out to the Superior Gold team directly. You can also of course find more information at superiorgold.com. But Chris, I'm gonna hand things back over to you for some closing remarks today. Yeah, I can just only appreciate the people that are on the call, you know, here's so many of these stories and, and it's some sometimes difficult to, to delineate them from each other.

56:12 And really, I just want to extend that, that invitation that you referred to really, mate. Anyone is, is, is more than welcome to contact us at any time. I think we're really well organized now with Mike, who just joined us. So his contact details as well as Paul's and I think mine is also available. So anyone who wants to reach out to us, we're more than willing to have a chat with you to make sure that any of your questions are answered. And as you can see, if we don't know, we'll go and find out. You know, we don't know all the answers. But I think insofar as our strategy that we've articulated today, the fact that, you know, we've consistently over the last few quarters delivered against that strategy and Now looking forward in FY22, moving on to delivering the next goal or part of the next goal, which is phase 1 of goal 2.

57:11 I think it's testimony of the really fantastic effort that our team has pulled together. I want to use this opportunity also to recognize and call out the team at the mine, which just did extraordinary work specifically towards Q4 to help us achieve a production which goes beyond a guidance which was a tough upper level guidance. So, you know, very happy with the results. So once again, anytime anyone wants to contact us, please feel free. So we'll make ourselves available to entertain those conversations. And we look forward to your calls. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Paul and Christopher, coming on yet again. And with that, we'll be wrapping things up today. I hope you both have a good rest of your day. Cheers.