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Thanks very much, Kevin, and good morning to everyone in Australia, and hello to all of our other callers and very happy to talk through the key points and highlights from the December 2018 quarter for Resolute. The key headline is in the title. It was the quarter where we successfully started the Syama Underground Mine sublevel cave activity, a pivotal point in the long and well-credentialed gold mining history of Resolute, an activity that we will now repeat for at least the next 14 years and a very important demonstration of the progress we're making in building a very long life, high-value asset for Resolute. Importantly, it also represented a quarter of improved production and cost performance, gold production of 74,000 ounces, which was 33% up on the September quarter, and that gold was produced in an all-in sustaining cost of AUD 1,360 an ounce, or USD 975 an ounce, which was a 13% improvement on the September quarter. That performance has allowed us to maintain our full year guidance to the financial year ending 30 June 2019, where we expect to produce 300,000 ounces of gold at an all-in sustaining cost of AUD 1,280 an ounce, or USD 960 an ounce. And for those who are doing the maths, obviously we've always recognized that with the ramp-up of the Syama Underground and the increasing production we expect to result from the high-grade underground ore of which we're getting increasing quantities day by day as we ramp up the Syama Underground Mine to expected full nameplate capacity of 200,000 tonnes a month by June, and that will flow through into continued quarterly improving production in costs. So at the halfway mark of that financial year to 30 June, we've produced just over 130,000 ounces. Obviously, that means to meet the guidance we need to produce 170,000 ounces in the second half of the year. That is what we expected in terms of the year. It's not a linear year, and so recognize that in order to maintain guidance, our forecast and our performance indicates that we will continue to improve our gold production, both from a production and a cost point in this quarter and next quarter, and we're tracking towards maintaining that guidance.The other milestones that we've highlighted in the title of today's quarterly is obviously the key milestone, I mentioned, of Syama Underground. We've also had an incredibly strong performance from the Syama oxide circuit, and that's as a result of the exceptional open pit grades and quantities of ore we're getting from the new Tabakoroni open-cut mine, the Namakan pit, approximately 35 kilometers south of Mali. Great response to the whole road we've constructed and another satellite orebody that we've opened up, and we're getting the benefit of that through the oxide circuit, an all-time record through that circuit in the December quarter. And Tabakoroni continues to excite us not just from that performance from the oxide circuit at Syama, but also the exceptional drilling results that we continue to release to the market and increasingly seeing Tabakoroni as a future standalone separate underground mine opportunity that we're now starting to model and eagerly awaiting maiden underground resource which we're expecting to announce during the course of the current quarter from Tabakoroni.We also announced during the quarter intention to list on the London Stock Exchange. Those preparations are underway, and we're looking forward to dual listing Resolute as a long-time leading gold producer on the ASX and to access new markets and provide an opportunity for London Stock Exchange investors for diversified global gold producer. And those preparations are expected to see Resolute listed on the London Stock Exchange in the first half of 2019.An improved safety performance, I'll just go quickly through the quarterly before I open it up for questions. We continue to focus across the group on the health and safety of our employees as well as our strong focus on security, and it's something that we're starting to see results from. We've been very heavily focused on lead indicators as well as an ongoing emphasis on the safety and security culture across the company and will remain a key focus as we move forward a number of quite exciting projects across the company. They do result in changing operations, most obviously here at Syama, where we're building a new underground mine. It is the world's first purpose-built fully automated underground mine. It provides great opportunities for increased financial performance but also increased safety performance. But in order to capitalize on both of those, it does require a strong focus on culture, and that continues across the organization. We're now expecting and receiving increasing tonnes from the underground mine. We've been looking forward to increasing the amount of development of more long-haul stoping ore and now, most importantly, ores from the longitudinal sublevel cave and the important and #1 focus here on site at Syama is to successfully ramp up that sublevel cave underground tonnage from the existing levels to the nameplate capacity of the underground mine of 200,000 tonnes a month by June. The increase of those tonnage is intrinsically linked to the implementation of the automated fleet. We're currently commissioning the long haul open -- the long-haul production drill rig automated. Looking forward to going underground tomorrow and seeing that in action. And over the coming months, we'll be implementing the automated loading and ultimately the complete automated haulage fleet with our partners here, Sandvik.Sulphide operations are continuing to improve, and that's where we're looking for a significant improvement both in the current quarter and the next quarter in order to achieve the guidance that we've anticipated as well as start next year in a different production footing from the transitional activities that we've been running here at Syama. Since we stopped the open pit mining activity in May of 2015, we're now very close to setting up this site for steady-state operations based on a steady-state 200,000 tonnes a month from the underground mine. Ore mined during the December quarter was 167,446 tonnes of underground ore, roughly double the 88,500 tonnes we mined at the September quarter, and that ramp-up will continue as we head towards that nameplate capacity. And we do expect recoveries from the sulphide mill which were just below 70% of the September quarter, just above 70% in the December quarter, and that's very responsive to the head grade and obviously the increasing tonnes of underground ore, as we've been indicating, will displace low-grade stockpiles and allow us to see the benefits of the various improvements we've made in the circuit. Importantly, during periods of time where we're processing high-grade underground ore, we do see the benefits of the float tail circuit we've implemented and the other aspects of Project 85 demonstrates itself in delivering recoveries in or above 85%, and we remain very confident that once we've reached that steady-state, we'll see that consistent high recoveries as we expect from the sulphide operations and the improvements we've made.As I mentioned, the oxide operations had a fantastic quarter. We produced almost 35,000 ounces from the Syama oxide circuit, which is an all-time record and as a response -- in response to the grade and ore that we're getting from the new Tabakoroni Namakan pit. Key activity here as well as focusing on the underground mine and the automation fleet is a preparatory stages for another key project here at Syama that we announced during the quarter, which was the construction of the world's largest mine site based solar hybrid power plant which we're developing with our partners, Ignite Energy. And the preparation work for that is ongoing, and that new plant will be operational by 2020, leading to a 40% saving in our power cost, the key part of our ongoing work to deliver Syama as a world-class, high-production gold mine producing gold in the range of USD 750 an ounce. So very delighted to keep that project off and look forward to continuing to update the market on the key milestones that will occur between now and the commissioning of that project next year as well as focusing on the timeline for the Syama Underground mine and specifically, the near-term milestones of implementation of that automation fleet. Particularly here at Syama, we continue to focus on exploration and the key areas that we're active here are continuing to extend the main Syama orebody south into the new discovery we've made just south of Syama called Nafolo, a local Bambara width for treasure, and we have exploration drill rigs continuing to look at that very obvious opportunity to extend laterally our current mine reserve in the underground mine. And then as I mentioned, the Tabakoroni, where we're currently mining the oxide ore feeding the oxide mill, we're excited about 2 high-grade sulphide shoots. We've currently got active drill rigs working on that and looking forward to a maiden new resource at Tabakoroni during the current quarter, and we've included details of that in a cross-section in the quarterly.Moving on to Australia. A very important period of time in the December quarter, Ravenswood. We've extended the Queensland Government support for our expansion plans at Ravenswood. It remains a Prescribed Project in Queensland. We continue to have very strong support from government. All of the required approvals that we require for the Ravenswood expansion plan as we published in July. We're also getting increasingly excited about the strategic review we're doing of this asset. It is based on a fundamental reassessment of every aspect of our expansion plan starting with our geological model. Ravenswood continues to be a project that Resolute sees huge upside in. We've been incredibly successful there with the Mt Wright underground mine. We've mined a 2.5-gram orebody to 900 meters underground. We've pioneered the sublevel caving method within Resolute, and we've achieved an average life of mine cash cost of that underground mine in the order of AUD 850 an ounce. It's a phenomenal achievement, and it's one that obviously we're using that skill set here at Syama as we commission the next sublevel caves in the company's history. Back at Ravenswood, we're looking and have defined a 14-year mine life future based on a return to the nameplate capacity of 5 million tonnes. That's when we acquired the Ravenswood gold mine almost 15 years ago. That was the scale the mine was operating. We're taking it back to that mine based on the 4 million ounces or more of existing resources we have within a 4-square kilometer radius of that mill. And those plans continue to provide us opportunities for further optimization, and we look forward to updating the market on the outcome of that review. As we do also in Bibiani, we -- not a lot of coverage in this quarterly due to the significant activity we've had at Syama and Ravenswood, but we are continuing to look at the recommissioning plan for Bibiani, and I look forward to providing more details during the current quarter.Moving on to our corporate summary. We still -- we even maintained a very strong balance sheet during what is a strong investing period in the company's history as we deliver future long-life mines here at Syama and the Ravenswood. We finished the 2018 year with $117 million in cash, bullion and listed investments. Very strong support from our bankers. We've confirmed the successful syndication of the revolving credit facility we've put in place. That's an expandable facility. It's banked by a range of international lenders who largely have provided strong historical support for Resolute. The limit of that revolving credit facility is currently USD 150 million. We've only been required to draw that to USD 100 million at this stage. So a significant additional credit, both in the existing limit as well as the opportunity to expand that. It's not considered necessary that we'll expand it for our existing opportunities, both here at Syama and the completion of the underground mine, which remains tracking in line with our previously published budget on the Ravenswood underground mine. The opportunities we have to continue to fund Ravenswood and Bibiani, we believe, are available both from our existing facilities and the increasing operational cash flows we'll generate particularly here from Syama.We continue to take advantage of strong gold prices, both in U.S. dollar terms and Australian dollar terms. We've had a very modest hedge book which has been very successful over the last couple of years, and we continue to look at opportunities to provide modest price support during an investing period of the company. At the moment, we've got 115,000 ounces of gold sold forward over the next 18 months. That represents less than 1/3 of our production over that period and obviously an insignificant percentage of less than 2% of our in-ground reserves, all of which sits underneath mills that we own and operate and control. We've drawn down our gold in circuit inventories but we maintained an inventory largely here at Syama of more than 70,000 ounces which, as we point out, has a market value of more than AUD 130 million. And that is an asset that we'll be using in addition with the opportunity we have to generate cash flow from ongoing production.We have indicated that as part of and the efforts to list Resolute -- dual list Resolute in the London Stock Exchange, we're aligning the calendar financial year that we have with our African subsidiary companies for the harder accounting regulations with a 31 December year-end. That's part of an ongoing process we have across the company and the implementation of an ERP system and a range of new, modern digital information systems all the way to the way we operate the mine, to the way we report on the mine. That will mean that we move during the course of the current year to a 31 December financial year-end, and we'll be updating guidance for the 2019 calendar year during the course of this quarter. Importantly, that does -- we will continue to report against our previous guidance to 30 June 2018, and the key part of this quarterly is maintaining that we are on track to complete that guidance. And when we announce guidance, both from production,, cost and capital numbers and our exploration budget for the calendar 2019 year ending 31 December, that guidance will be incremental and additional to the existing guidance we've provided for the previous financial year ending 30 June 2019.With that summary, I look forward to questions from interested callers, and I'll pass it back to you, Kevin, to facilitate those questions.
[Operator Instructions] Our first question today is from David Radclyffe from Global Mining Research.
So my first question here is just on what sort of capital we should expect for the next 6 months. Because guidance, I think, was $150 million. And you've spent just under $180 million, so far, in the first 6 months. I think you are able to give us a bit of a split between Australia and Mali in terms of what you spent?
Yes, David. You're correct. Obviously, the $180 million you refer includes nonproject capital outside of the guidance we've provided for both the Syama development and the Ravenswood development, and that consists of some of the business development activity we're doing as well as the exploration budgets that we're funding. Capital from Syama we've -- in terms of the USD 220-odd million budget that we forecast in the updated feasibility study we published in July 2018. We've got about $50 million still to spend here at Syama. And look, the split over the next 12 months in terms of our capital spend is going to continue to be 70% to 80% at Syama and 20% to 30% at Ravenswood.
Okay. And then maybe as a follow-up, coming back to the target to be at capacity at Syama Underground by midyear, will that all be caving tonnes or will there be a reasonable amount of development tonnes in that? And how should we sort of think of that in comparison I guess to some of the other sublevel caves starting up now that are talking to, sort of, more -- sort of ramp up curves being more like 18 months?
The mix will include both development ore and various long-haul starting opportunities, but predominantly the increase is going to come from the main tonnes and the main bulk of the future production is from the longitudinal cave. And look, we've been mining development ore for more than 12 months and we've been mining long-haul stoping ore for approximately 6 months. And I'm not sure about the ramp-up of other block caves and sublevel caves. We're very confident in our ability to increase tonnes from the transverse sublevel cave quite quickly. The ability to do that -- we've established the drill points required, it's really the implementation and the commissioning hand-in-hand with that ramp-up of the automation fleet that's driving the speed of that ramp-up that we certainly have a schedule online that we're tracking to, which would see us achieve that run rate of 200,000 tonnes by the end of June. That obviously won't mean -- that would mean that we're looking to get 600,000 tonnes of underground ore from a variety of sources, the bulk of which, the vast majority of which will come from sublevel caving ore during the September quarter.
[Operator Instructions] Our next question is from Reg Spencer from Canaccord.
John, [indiscernible]
Sorry, due to the person's audio line, we've released that line. [Operator Instructions] But our next question is from Warren Edney from Baillieu.
John, I'd like to ask a question about Tabakoroni. Just looking at the diagram in the quarterly, it looks like there's a base of oxidation right near the top and then you move into a period where you look like to be mining transitional. I just wondered if you could sort of talk about that and perhaps how you see recoveries over the open pit life. Will they reduce as you get closer to the threshold?
Warren, it's a good question. If you look at our reserve model, we actually see that the depth of that oxidization actually varies through the strike length, which is more than 1 kilometer down to Tabakoroni. So at the moment, we're in the Namakan pit, we've been really pleased with the grades we're getting there. It is causing us to go back and relook at our model. It's quite nuggety ore. We're getting benefit of the recently commissioned gravity circuit there. So it's performing in terms of recovery, it seems better than we anticipate. And so recoveries have actually been higher, they're currently up about 90%. And that's allowing us to relook at the cutoff and also particularly in terms of the exploration we have in the area we called Tabakoroni North or which was previously called the porphyry zone. The actual areas where we're mining are relatively narrow steady dipping orebodies. So that depth of oxidization is quite important in terms of the mine plan, it's something that we're planning to monitor. But at this stage, the performance of Tabakoroni's been great grade slightly higher than the model. And as I said we're analyzing that. Recoveries are very strong, 84%, as you can see in the quarterly numbers average across the quarter. But certainly, at the moment, we're getting recoveries up about 90%. Because of the easily crushed ore we're also getting very good throughput. So it's something that we'll focus on continuing for as long as we can. But everything we're seeing down at Tabakoroni both from a current and medium-term outlook in terms of oxide mining, but particularly opportunity to expand that and the metallurgical characteristics of the ore in terms of what might lie underneath that both in terms of processing the transitional zone with strong recoveries as well as the ultimately established underground mining is positive.
Okay. And I'd just like to ask a question about Ravenswood. How much life have you got left in the stockpiles? And when do you now think that you'll be processing the open pit material at 4 million tonnes per annum?
It's a good question, Warren. One of the issues we've got at Ravenswood is Mt Wright being the gift that just keeps on giving. So there is an internal view that we've developed the world's largest beneficiation plant there with the low levels of that sublevel cave and our ability to effectively extract more ore from the Mt. Wright underground mine than was originally in geological model. We can see -- anyone who's following Resolute will know that we've previously indicated that, that mine was shut several years ago. Last year, we were saying it would continue until towards the end of the current financial year being the year ending in June of this year, and we now believe that Mt. Wright will continue during the 2019 calendar year, currently scheduled at October, but even that date is capable of pushing out further. So that provides us with additional time. It means that we'll do the strategic review and the ongoing work we're looking at what is the optimal scale, size and opportunity at Ravenswood. Clearly, our baseline and the approvals we're working on is a 5 million tonne a year operation headlined by opening up Buck Reef West. And the short answer to your question is that we've got more than enough stockpiles to continue our current production both from Mt. Wright and the available stockpiles through this calendar year and into 2020. And we expect to be mining Buck Reef West by 2020 under any of those scenarios. And so that's our current plan is to maintain the current operations based on stockpiled material in Mt. Wright and commence mining Buck Reef West in 2020 as part of the current and/or optimized plans within the Ravenswood expansion plan.
[Operator Instructions] Our next question is from Matthew Frydman from Goldman Sachs.
John, just one question on the Syama sulphide circuit in particular. Project 85, you did identify 4 items in particular in the DFS. Just wondering if those have all now been commissioned? And I suppose, what are your expectations around the ramp-up of those 4 items in particular? And then I suppose, secondly, how does that translate into how you're thinking about the Low Carbon roaster, how you're tracking on that project, and your thoughts sort of now that you're commissioning those other items in Project 85 and increasing your knowledge of how the circuit performs and how the oxide performs?
Thanks, Matthew. So the key point of your question is to talk about the key elements of the Project 85 infrastructure, all of which is now operational. And the added element and one that we've identified for some time which we haven't yet constructed, which is the Low Carbon roast technology. So intrinsically within P85, or Project 85, is the -- that's pretty obvious from the title is our ambition to provide a minimum of 85% recovery from that sulphide circuit once we've got a steady state feed approximating the 3 grams we're expecting to get from consistent underground ore. If you go back to the DFS, you'll know that we actually have predicated the long-term life of mine cost below USD 750 an ounce of this mine on getting 89% recoveries. The difference between Project 85 and getting 89 or more is the additional recovery we expect to get from the implementation of the Low Carbon roast project. It's roughly a USD 20 million investment, very, very high IRR on that investment. The decision to defer that is really around our human resource capacity and our focus, on the first part of your question, which is making sure that we're bedding down implementing and commissioning all of the other changes we've made to the circuit. And we'll have the opportunity to do that in a steady-state environment possibly the first time this mine certainly of the sulphide operations. In the 30 years that this mine's been operating, it's actually had the opportunity of a steady-state operation over the next 2 years. So as I said in the call, the elements of Project 85 that have been constructed and commissioned are working incredibly well. The key part of that and the one where the significant additional recovery comes through is the implementation of the float tail circuit. So if you look at the gold balance from the point of view not of what you're recovering but what you're losing, the really obvious and key loss we had from our gold balance system in the way that we were running the circuit up until the commissioning of Project 85. It was at the very front end, so the quick high-level summary for listeners and those interested in the Syama operations is we have primary, secondary and tertiary crushing. We then have a float circuit that produces a concentrate. We roast that concentrate through the Syama roaster, and then we have a traditional cyanide in situ leach which leads through into the gold room and the gold port. The most gold we have lost in operating Syama historically is at the very first element of that key parts of that circuit which is the float circuit. And the most obvious implementation of Project 85 is to capture that tailing, that float tail circuit and the construction of an additional leach circuit which we believe adds an extra somewhere between 3% and 7% on total recoveries. That part of the circuit, to answer your question, is operating as we expected during periods of time where we've got the correct grade coming into the front end, we see the additional recoveries. And we're very confident that once we get a head grade through the circuit consistently above 2.5 grams and certainly when we're getting the 3 gram of ore that we expect from the Syama Underground, we'll see the benefit of that circuit. Project 85 is certainly -- the success of the implementation and the commissioning of the elements that you mentioned has increased our confidence that into roughly 2 years' time when we're next doing a planned biennial or every 2-year roaster shutdown that, that will be the right time to have the tie-ins ready for the Low Carbon roaster and further boost those recoveries. I've said it all along that if you want to watch the Syama progress, you should look at the tonnes we're getting from the underground and the recoveries we're getting from those tonnes. It is a show-me story over the next 2 or 3 quarters and we will -- I'm very confident that those tonnes will come up, the grade will come up and the recoveries will come up and so that's something we have to start demonstrating from now on. Project -- the Low Carbon roaster is out there in front of us, but the key elements of the circuit that we've already commissioned are the ones that are going to drive those increasing ultimately production recovery and ultimately cash flow numbers. And importantly, the faith and the confidence we have in the Syama sulphide circuit and the improvements we've made are what are driving the enthusiasm we have for further exploration of the sulphide resources that we're expanding at Nafolo and the Tabakoroni, but also the investment we're making in what is a growth opportunity with the Syama underground mine. The automation is obviously hugely advantageous at the nameplate capacity of 2.4 million tonnes per annum. But everything we're doing here is about future opportunities to expand. Then that expansion, both in terms of exploration, reserve tonnage and ultimately production is recognizing that here at Syama we have a world-class, very large, very expandable sulphide ore body. So in order to get value from that, we need to generate higher recoveries from it.
The next question is from [ Brian Tudor ], a private investor.
John, I appreciate the work that you have put into the company. And if you have actually looked at the hard copper discussions forum in Australia, there are actually quite a lot of concern in terms of how much have been spent on Syama and Ravenswood, which you have answered from a previous caller. What actually I'm interested in asking about, in particular, is when you -- you've been talking about the gold in circuit and that -- for the past couple of quarters, it exceeds $100 million. And I'm just wondering how much does it cost? And is it expensive to actually process those in order to convert them into cash? Because you -- the company has been borrowing quite a bit, and it has spent up to about $250 million, $300 million in the past 2 years or so, and small investors like myself, we are actually concerned because that is actually what's affecting investing interest in general. So would you be able to address this question?
[ Brian ], thank you for your interest and, look, always interested in direct questions from any investors, institutional, private or anywhere. We don't officially participate in any blog sites, but we do have a very active Investor Relations function, company's got a website, my contact details are readily available on our quarterlies, and encourage anyone like yourself to ring in and ask any questions, but also you don't have to wait for the quarterly conference call. I very much enjoy interactions with the market and with shareholders. And we are seeking both through our quarterly activities, reports and otherwise to provide the disclosure that investors require to analyze Resolute. And I'm confident with the analyst coverage we have and the accurate assessment of the published research notes that I review that are available in the market that we're doing a good job in providing educated and well-informed market analysts with the value of the investments we're making and the capital investments specifically that you refer to at Syama and at Ravenswood and how we're tracking from a balance sheet perspective. So first of all, I assure you that from our position we're exactly where we always thought we would be. We are taking on debt to fund growth, and I think that's an entirely responsible position when we've got such exciting growth opportunities, and looking at how best we fund them through a combination of whether that should be equity debt, and I think we've balanced that quite well to date, and certainly we're in a very strong position to continue to fund the development plans that we've got. In terms of your specific question in relation to gold in circuit, it is a large balance. We do see it as quite a valuable available reserve on our balance sheet. And you'll see some of the benefit of that as we draw it down. The key element where Resolute is different from most gold companies is the amount of gold in circuit we have. That's a historical factor in relation specifically to the Syama sulphide operation. In relation to another question, I ran through at a very high level that the Syama sulphide circuit consist of crushing, flotation, roaster, traditional leaching and then gold production. In the nature of the success we've had at Syama compared to previous owners is efficiency of the roaster that we've been able to produce, but that has resulted in our stockpiling what we call carbon-enriched concentrate. So the current concentrate that we produce from the float circuit and we roast is roughly -- ranges between 30 grams and 40 grams a tonne. It self-sustains for the roaster and that gives us a good result. A small quantity of the concentrate that we produce from that float circuit is a carbon-enriched concentrate which we're currently stockpiling, and that represents the vast majority of what would turn that gold in circuit in that it's a stockpiled concentrate stock that exists between the crusher and the gold room. And we could process that material currently, but our recoveries from it would be relatively poor. It represents an asset where we're very confident we're going to get strong recoveries once we've implemented the Low Carbon roaster addition to the circuit. It's a relative compared to our normal run of mine concentrate which is 30 to 40 grams a tonne. The carbon-rich concentrate is roughly 20 grams a tonne or less. So it's a lower quality, lower grade concentrate that if we process, the circuit is currently concentrated, we would generate lower recoveries. But when the Low Carbon roaster, the next stage of the Syama improvements to our processing circuit is implemented, we'll be able to process that concentrate along with all our normal run of mine concentrate with similar recoveries. So you'd expect, therefore, to see a bit of a -- we will continue to pull down other gold in circuit around the circuit, but the majority of that gold in circuit inventory balance will continue to exist as a stockpiled resource until we decide to process it, and that won't be until the low carbon roaster is implemented. So we -- I do think it's appropriate for us to disclose that balance though it is a resource that we have available. We will ultimately end up pouring that, and it will provide benefit to shareholders. In the meantime though, to answer your question, we do need to fund the ambitious growth projects that we're investing in. And so effectively, we are drawing down on very low cost corporate debt in the form of the fully syndicated revolver that I mentioned earlier. And you might like to consider that effectively as a loan against gold in circuit balance, if not against all the other assets of the company. I continue to see us, in terms of an appropriate level of gearing, as a very lowly geared business with very strong cash flows. So notwithstanding the concerns that you mentioned that may be being exchanged between various people in the blogs that you look at, very happy to talk about our level of gearing, our ability to service the very modest debt we currently have and the returns that we're generating on all of the projects that we're investing in.
[Operator Instructions] And our next question is from Reg Spencer from Canaccord.
My question's mainly around Ravenswood and Syama oxide. I'll start with Ravenswood. That decision to extend Mt. Wright and employ that overdraw approach, can you give us an idea on how we should be thinking about what that might mean for grades out of Mt. Wright going forward? I believe your reserve grade's about 2.7. Will grades coming out of the underground be maintained at current levels? Or will they go down? And secondly, while we're on Ravenswood, the stockpiles that you mentioned with the decision to defer or go on the REP, will you have sufficient stockpiles to be able to kick the mill at some reasonable level of utilization given that -- my understanding is your stockpiles are around 650,000-odd tonnes at about 0.7. So I was just wondering if you could help me on that, please.
Yes. Thanks, Reg. So first of all, in relation to Mt. Wright, we have lowered the cutoff grade for Mt. Wright. So the ore we're pulling out of there will go down, but ultimately, to a cutoff of around 1.7 grams per tonne. I think previously, we've been mining it at -- during the most of that mine above 2. So that's one of the reasons why we're expecting some more ore over the course of this year through to October. And so you can model. Obviously that 1.7 gram material is still significantly higher grade and is displacing, in the current capacity of the mill, the low-grade stockpiles that you mentioned which are 0.7, 0.8 of a gram. Certainly the stockpiles that we've got our reserve grade is also a significant amount of material that we believe is beneficiable in various stockpiles that aren't currently part of our resource and reserve grade. We don't necessarily need to process those, but there are available options. So certainly, we see the capacity to keep the mill at its current 2.8 million tonne per annum through rate based on Mt. Wright and various available stockpiles all the way through to the middle of 2020. So well after, we expect to be mining at Buck Reef West.
Okay, great. And at Syama oxide, just looking at those recoveries. I was just curious as to why that might be so low given the grade that you're putting into the plant. You mentioned on an earlier question that recovery should continue to get better, better at 3.7 grams. I would have thought your recoveries might be higher than what you reported in the quarter. I was wondering if you're able to comment on that as well.
Yes, sure. Thanks, Reg. So just to clarify and confirm the comments I've made earlier around that, we are getting some really high recoveries at the moment but we're in a very nice patch of -- which is relatively brief in terms of the shallow satellite orebodies that we're mining. Tabakoroni is a high-grade and more nuggety orebody than the satellite pits that we've dug in the north. And my comments earlier around what the Syama mineralization consists of is that ultimately, we're here on top of a very large refractory sulphide orebody. And the -- obviously, we have the surface expressions of oxide up and down the 80 kilometers of belt that we control. But the oxide resources are relatively shallow. And so when we mine them, we do as asked earlier, also mine a significant amount of transitional ore. And so the -- we're always either moving in and out of transitional ore and through oxide ore. So there's a number of different stages at Tabakoroni. And that's why, generally, we expect the recovery from the oxide plant during the life of the Tabakoroni open pits to fluctuate above and below 80%. And so that -- it's not an incredibly high-grade free milling oxide mill that we expect to generate 95 or plus percent recoveries. Effectively, the oxide plant will obviously rate ultimately at similar several recoveries or even slightly below the long-term rate that we expect to get from the sulphide plant.
That's useful. You might have to change the name from Syama oxide to something else perhaps.
Yes, well, look, it's a good question. I mean, obviously we have and continue to report as if we're running 2 mines on the 1 site. They are entirely separate plants. And if you come here sitting about a kilometer away from me, we have 2 entirely independent crushing and processing routes. The only 2 areas really where the Syama oxide processing plant and the Syama sulphide processing plant intermingle are the power source that they receive and the gold room where they pour gold. The crushing units are completely independent, but our total crushing capacity on site, if you add the 1.5 million to 1.6 million tonnes per annum that we're running the oxide plant with the 2.4 million from the sulphide plant, we effectively got 4 million tonnes of crushing capacity. And so ultimately, it's not -- we are thinking about how do we combine and/or how do we keep on reporting about these 2 separate projects. Ultimately, our ambition here at Syama is to produce a very low cost and expanded total production. So between those 2 existing processing circuits, the Syama Underground gives us the capacity to increase total site production to 30,000 ounces, and at some point, you're correct, we will be combining those 2 separately reported productions into 1.
There is no further -- sorry, we have another question there. Oh, no, that's all -- sorry, from Reg Spencer from Canaccord. Sorry, Reg is not responding there. We have no more further questions at this time. I'd like to hand the call back for any continuing remarks. Please continue.
Thanks very much to everyone who's dialed in. As I said earlier in this call, totally recognize that the Syama at the moment particularly is a show- me story. On-site here, we're very excited about the early steps at the sublevel cave. It's all action stations here with the commissioning, along with our partners in Sandvik, in what is the world's first fully automated underground mine, from production drilling to loading to haulage. And I'm looking forward to continuing to demonstrate the effectiveness of the investments we've made in that fleet and this mine and show the results that we need to show in terms of tonnes coming out of the underground mine, recovery rates through the sulphide circuit and ultimately low cost gold production. That's what Syama is all about. Ravenswood continues to be a growth story for Resolute. Look forward to updating the market during the course of this quarter on our plans for Bibiani and our ongoing exploration focus as well as the Investor Relations rollout of our dual listing in London and the considerable focus that we are spending on spreading our wings in terms of evaluating a range of expansion and further business development opportunities, both within our existing investment portfolio in a range of African-focused gold mining explorers and developers as well as other opportunities. It's an exciting time to be working at Resolute. I hope very much it's an exciting and rewarding time to be a shareholder of Resolute. Thanks very much for your interest, and look forward to speaking to you again.