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St Barbara Ltd
ASX:SBM

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St Barbara Ltd
ASX:SBM
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Price: 0.275 AUD 14.58% Market Closed
Updated: May 13, 2024

Earnings Call Transcript

Earnings Call Transcript
2018-Q4

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Operator

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the St Barbara June 2018 Quarterly Report Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Bob Vassie, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead.

R
Robert Scott Vassie
MD, CEO & Director

Okay. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for St Barbara's June end of year quarterly report briefing. Today, I have with me the usual executive leadership team, Garth and Rowan, Val. We also have Lucas Welsh, our GM, Finance; and Roger Mustard, who's in town, he's our GM, Exploration. Also introducing our new IR Manager, who some of you may know, David Cotterell, who used to be on the other side of these calls.I'm pleased to be saying it's been a record-breaking quarter and year for the company again, with over 400,000 ounces produced for the first time. It was also a record quarter and record annual operational free cash flow of $105 million for the quarter and 345 -- $349 million for the year, respectively. After accounting for $41 million of dividends and $32 million on growth projects and $40 million in income taxes, we built our cash balance by $183 million to $344 million this year. Consolidated and Simberi all-in sustaining costs were also at record lows, with consolidated all-in sustaining cost under AUD 900 per ounce for the first time, coming in at AUD 891 per ounce. Gwalia was only slightly over the record financial year '17 result for cost. Well, in unit cost mainly because of the ventilation constraints that we're currently experiencing and some impacts of the extension project. But again, to the grade delivered, a record quarterly and end result in terms of ounces. With both operations going so well, we've been focused on organic growth. We announced an extension to Gwalia's life at the half year, which took it to 2031 as part of the Gwalia Mass Extraction project. I'm also now pleased to announce that we have managed to extend Simberi's oxide life again. We now have 2 years ahead of us as mining and processing as we do now and a further year of processing low-grade stocks. That's very pleasing.Our main expansion project, the Gwalia Extension Project, is progressing well. In fact, we're about to hold through on our first surface vent shaft raisebore and complete the pilot hole of the next surface shaft much the same time. We have further progressed the feasibility study for Gwalia Mass Extraction, or GMX as we call it, and we are carrying 2 main crushing and pumping solutions through the feasibility study, aiming to complete that in December this year. I'll spend a bit more time on that later.We have changed our view on project timing and operating costs of the early stages of the project, but we need to finish the feasibility study to be able to refine project metrics. Our exploration work continues with more work at Gwalia where we've just completed our 2,600 meter below surface hole, and we are seeing some very encouraging results from our sulphide drilling below Sorowar Pit at Simberi. Slide 4 covers off the highlights that I've just mentioned. Slide 5, as we usually have on safety. Pleasingly, we have been able to put downward pressure on our total recordable injury frequency rate. We came in, in the year with 9 recordable injuries, that was 3 at Simberi and 6 at Leonora, all of relatively low severity. Our audit scores have risen, and we're focusing on safety behaviors and safety leadership.Slide 6 and 7 cover our consolidated performance and guidance. You can see the consolidated quarterly production and cost result, with Slide 7 showing the annual result and comparison plus financial year '19 guidance. I'll look in detail in the site-specific slides. So if we look at Slides 8 and 9 on Gwalia, Gwalia had a record quarter as well as a record year, with the previous record quarter back in financial year '16. The result was from improved grade and in Q4, much improved volumes after the short-term pain in the last quarter while we reset the mining front or the chevron of our mining front at depth. Overall grade for the year was a record 12.5 grams per tonne as we have confined our attention to South West Branch for the duration of the expansion project, and we remain in the high-grade, so-called sweet spot of the orebody.Annual volume was well down on previous years, financial year '18 was 679,000 tonnes of ore compared to the year before at 790,000. And this is due to the impact of the expansion project activities and the ventilation constraints we're experiencing. In a sense, as I think I said last time, it's the best time to be doing the expansion project while we're in the high grades. And once we get waste handled by paste aggregate fill and the new ventilation in place, we can push on to higher ore volumes. It has been a great year for Kous Kirsten and the team at Gwalia where there has always been a strong culture of continuous improvement and indeed, innovations. The paste aggregate fill that we're constructing now and the Gwalia Mass Extraction are great examples of thinking out-of-the-box to go stronger for longer at Gwalia.Guidance for financial year at Gwalia -- sorry, financial year '19 at Gwalia, as you'll note, is similar to previous years and standard guidance is what our model generates. In the first half, however, there, we will be expecting a lot of traffic in the decline from the expansion project. So that's ventilation shaft waste from the raisebores coming up the decline and paste aggregate fill underground crushing components coming down to be installed. In the second half, we'll begin to see the benefits of paste aggregate fill keeping the waste underground and not having to traffic to surface. And we're expecting to commission that in Q2.Our sustaining CapEx guidance for financial year '19 at Gwalia of $50 million to $55 million is an increase over our FY '18 spend of $33 million. Some of the increase relates to deferred projects from last year because the guidance there was $35 million to $40 million and we only spent $33 million. Most of the increase, however, is due to large increase in mining development that's planned for the year and roughly double the lateral meters that we did in financial year '18. And of course, this is partly some deferred development from last year, but also the result of the increased development requirements for going back into mining West Lode and the implementation of a more geotechnically conservative stope access design, including greater offset of the decline. I'll discuss a bit more of that later. Essentially, some of this extra CapEx is setting us up for Gwalia Mass Extraction mining. But as it applies to both trucking and pumping, we have kept it in the sustaining CapEx.Moving on to -- I'll discuss those points more later in detail. Moving on to Simberi production and cost and guidance, Slides 10 and 11. Simberi had another great quarter and a record-breaking year. The main drivers had been good grades that we are seeing deep in the oxide pits and the many incremental improvements in mining and processing practices. Recovery has been at 85% for the year compared with 82% for the previous 2 years. Tim Richards and his team continue their outstanding work, not only in turning around the operation, but in improving cash flow, extending the operation, adopting a valuable stockpile strategy and doing the work to enhance the sulphide project economics.In Slide 2, as I said -- Slide 12, as I said in the intro, we have extended the life of Simberi again. 2 years ago, we said we had 2 years left. Now we're saying we have 2 years left, plus another year of processing of low-grade stocks. This is fantastic and bodes well for any investment decision on sulphides in the future. Of course, this rolling extension means we need to invest some capital when replacing some older trucks, and we will do a refurbishment of the Ropecon suspension lines. We would have thought not to do that if the mine was finishing now. But as it's continuing, it's prudent to spend that money. And also that money could benefit these sulphide projects moving forward.And yes, this increases sustaining CapEx in financial year '19 for Simberi to $8 million to $10 million while impacting guidance of around 110,000 ounces produced between AUD 1,275 and AUD 1,375 per ounce all-in sustaining cost. The detail of that, what we're finding in our shallow drilling program beneath Sorowar Pit is on Slide 20 and in the Appendix. We're doing some very encouraging intersects there, which justifies ongoing drilling to inform the sulphide gold prefeasibility study.So as I've said before, we've got 1.4 million ounces at 3.5 grams of sulphide material below Pigiput and nothing below Sorowar, which is right next door. This whitespace drilling at 60-meter centers are showing us that we've got very similar conditions below Sorowar. So there's a real prospect of being able to end up with a greater size of sulphide inventory and deposit to run our studies on and increase those economics. In fact, some of the intersects that we're seeing there are quite encouraging, and we've got 1 slide there in Slide 23, but there's a few more at the back, intersects the sulphides at 20 meters at 8.42 grams a tonne is one that attracts attention, and just below that, 15 meters at 7 grams a tonne. So now you can't carve out that too much to get the tighter space drilling and so that you can see where this high-grade goes into shoot, so whatever like we see in the neighboring pit, but it does bode well for the future. Importantly, it would allow us to slow down the sink rate of Pigiput and have contribution from both mines and keep the Ropecon going longer for that project. But we'll talk more about that when we get more drilling in, but I'm really pleased with what we're seeing.Slide 13 and 14 show what we've been doing with our cash balance and cash management. The -- our cash balance has continued to build robustly even with some significant growth spending; income tax payments, which we weren't paying before, of course; dividends; and investments in junior explorers. And that's all laid out in those 2 slides. As usual, we've got a bit of the project timeline of all the different organic things we're doing on Slide 15. And our main organic project is the Gwalia Extension Project, which is an update on Slide 16. I've already mentioned PAF, where the delays, I mentioned last quarter, being worked through. We're just preparing the concrete to bring the gear down and install it. The development is complete, the overhead rails and we're keen to get this stuff assembled now. Everything is on the surface. Raiseboring is going well with the upward reaming of the first shaft, that's a 5-meter raisebore shaft of about 926 meters that's about a hole through. And we've got a second rig doing the pilot of the next shaft which is about a hole through down at the bottom. So we've got concurrent activities. More broadly, the major spending of the whole project will be complete in financial year '19, with financial year '20 mainly being commissioning work. Our original schedule had a timing of 2.5 to 3 years. We'll be at the earlier end of that range, and we pick the quarter Q2 financial year '20, which is October to December next year for the completion of the whole project. And that gets the air into the mine and that means we can get going.GMX. An update on GMX, which is covered on Slide 17 to 19. The materials handling options study that we're doing within the feasibility study that's currently underway for GMX has generated an alternative flow sheet. We've got a couple of interesting technologies to carry through those projects, so we can pick the best one for crushing and slurry pumping options. We're using a couple of leading consultants and bringing in some capacity to make sure that we get this study done well and pick the right way to go forward. A relatively new technology involving 3-chamber pipe feeding system is something that we are carrying through the feasibility study. When we've announced this before we've relied on 2-stage crushing, high-pressure grinding rolls to get down to about 2 millimeters, mix of 50-50 with water and pump it with a positive displacement pump to the surface. So that's still one of the options that we're carrying through the feasibility study. But we're also introducing a competing option which is a bit different. It uses the 3 chamber pipe feeder system, which we would be able to feed at a, of course, a fraction, about 20 millimeters instead of 2-millimeter, and you'll be able to achieve that with crushing only and mixing with at water about 75% water, 25% crushed ore.This, by avoiding underground grinding, we can reduce CapEx and make better use of existing surface grinding assets, and the crushing assets we have on surface will also reduce the ventilation required for underground grinding and for pumping as well because in that case, the pumping would be on the surface pushing downwards in a U-tube type of approach. So to be clear, we're carrying both options through the study and therefore, can only give higher accuracy on the project metrics once we're finished with that, which is timed for December this year.5-year Gwalia guidance. Last -- I think at the half-year was the first time we ever came out with anything past the annual guidance and we've put out a bit -- a guide, a forecast to the end of financial year 2022. That had a partial year of GMX in financial year '21 and a full year of GMX in '22.So our recently completed budget and life of mine planning cycles that we do this time of the year as well as more detailed engineering that some of the feasibility study currently underway, we have seen some changes to the way we execute GMX and its timing. Now that impacts the early stages of GMX, which actually happens to be in that forecast period that we sent out. So rather than wait until we finish the feasibility study, we have incorporated some of the changes to our previous long-term forecast through financial year '22 as it impacts those early stages. But it's important to note that we can only give a more detailed forecast on GMX once we've done the feasibility study work because obviously, PFS is in the range of plus or minus 30%.It is now expected that GMX would be operational 6 months later than before, and therefore, financial year '21 would be a full trucking year, and fortunately, still on good grade, and financial year '22 would be a full year with GMX. Study work has also shown that the development requirements for the optimized layout will be higher and ground support cost will also be higher. Further, a higher proportion of the development cost in the initial couple of years of GMX have been assigned to sustaining capital as opposed to growth CapEx, because generally, an ongoing change to the way we mine, some which we already started to do in this financial year, as I mentioned. These numbers will be further refined with the completion of the FS and may benefit from the final crushing and pumping flowsheet that we pick.Importantly, the objective of GMX is maintained as it enables doubling of mining rates to 1.4 million tonnes per annum as grade declines at depth and it extends life to 2031. This allows the mine to maintain high ounce production profile, including 300,000 ounces in the first year of GMX in financial year '22 and rates in excess of 200,000 ounces a year to 2029 and strong margins.Then deep drilling, I'll cover this pretty quickly due to the time we've got on this call. We -- our deep hole of 2,600 meters, we had some problems drilling that, lost the string -- had string failure in the hole, but we just backed up the hole and branched off and got to the target. We got through the sequence and come up with it, hit the mineralized system and including 4 distinct gold intercepts that are presented there, the similar nature of the intercepts that we've seen in deep drilling to-date. However, depending on the plunge of the orebody, when you look at long section, we can't tell just from 1 hole whether we're on the southern edge of the orebody or in the middle. It will require a couple of water holes to get a better picture. We have also popped a hole into 2 of our seismic targets, Conwy and Raglan. With both, we found Gwalia-like shared apex, the vehicle, if you like, of the Gwalia-type mineralization, and that's a good endorsement of our seismic exploration. For all the years that we've been there and others have been there, we didn't know these fissures were there until we did deep seismic. Then we saw them, we drilled them, they are the right type of rocks. In fact, in Conwy, we have a narrow gold intercept. One hole doesn't say a lot so we are planning to do downhole seismics within those holes that go into those targets and then follow up with some additional drilling of those parent holes.We've stepped out into the greater Leonora area. At Horsepaddock Well, we have begun RC drilling of the target we identified with Sub Audio Magnetics. And as I flagged in previous quarters, in financial year, we're ramping up our exploration efforts in this very prospective Lenora province where it has not been worked on for decades and in which we hold a 320-square kilometer land holding over 60 kilometers of that mineralized trend. So we need to get dealing with that. Our guidance for exploration spend in Greater Gwalia is around AUD 4 million, with approximately AUD 6 million to AUD 8 million in the surrounding province.In greenfield explorations on Slide 22, we're continuing -- we're now doing lake drilling in the more prospective areas of Pinjin. We're about to start drilling next month in Back Creek, which is in New South Wales. We have announced in this quarterly report the initial results of the Simberi sulphide drillings as well as a single deep hole underneath Pigiput for -- as a porphyry target where we intersected some very wide, around 240 meters of low-grade copper-gold-moly intercepts. And we're also drilling in other parts of the lease for more high-grade sulphides. On Tatau Island, as part of our Newcrest joint venture that keeps going. It, in the option period, finishes soon. So after having a look at Talik North and Kupo with a couple of holes each, we're now heading to Big Tabar Island at Banesa, which is a particular porphyry target I'm very interested in, and we are just preparing pads there now. Our growth pipeline and strategy slides are pretty much as before. So in conclusion, we've had a record-breaking year and quarter, record production of growth mines, record low cost at Simberi and for the consolidated group and record operational cash contribution. Our organic growth work is delivering results and we're very pleased with the extension to both mines and the prospects from exploration, especially Simberi sulphides. The board will consider dividend -- full year dividends as part of the full year financials coming soon. And as I always say, we're now well positioned for inorganic growth as well.I'll now be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Reg Spencer from Canaccord Genuity.

R
Reg Spencer
Mining Analyst

Just a couple of minor questions from me. Just on your Simberi guidance, you're looking at a 105,000 to 115,000 ounces. If we assume that you maintain about 1.3 or your current reserve grade and assume that current throughput rates are maintained, that lower production relative to what those nets normally apply, can we assume that, that's on the basis of slightly lower recoveries as you mine deeper and approach that sulphide boundary?

R
Robert Scott Vassie
MD, CEO & Director

Yes, look, you hit the nail on the head there, Reg, because you know that our guidance for Simberi is eerily similar to what we guided last year and because when we run the models and the assumptions that we use, it comes out about there. And if we do get the benefit of that higher grade and recovery, we -- it's obviously quite sensitive to that and it can go quite a bit higher. And so it does also depend on making sure that we do get that throughput we've reached through the Ropecon and through the SAG mill and ball mill has -- is really on the mix and has to be maintained to get those sort of results. So it does come down to the types of grade we see as we get deeper in the oxide and near the sulphides at certain horizons. We're already through the sulphides because it's not like a horizontal layer. It just lays us in and out as I'm sure you know. So you can hit areas where you impact recovery when you're in those sort of transitional areas. So somewhat conservatively perhaps we've picked some very -- where it is and always had to do better, but it's dependent on a lot of things. One thing I will say is that I'm not sure how many people have sort of latched on to the fact that with the 2, it took rollouts another 2 years and then a year of processing. And given the cash flow that's, I think, we had in the slide on the Appendix of just how much cash Simberi's generating, being able to do that longer is quite useful. In fact, it's done $82 million cash generation in financial year '18. Is that having 2 full production years ongoing and then processing of low-grade stockpiles, because we've got a high fixed cost at the mine, a high fixed cost percentage, we could mine slower and still fill the plant, but we -- because of the fixed cost nature of running the island, we just mined flat stick and form a low-grade stockpile. So we've got -- we've been doing that for about a year now, and so we're starting from good low-grade stockpiles which we'll continue to do. And so in the last year, you can essentially stop mining, speed up the Ropecon, which is something we're looking at, throw everything down the hill and process low-grade, which will be about 0.6, 0.65 through the mill at full capacity. And that just sort of extends you out a bit more time, be a couple of period or years there, and then a year where you're processing the low grade. And that bodes well for -- if we're planning on putting -- sorry, we're planning on putting location into sulphides. And I will point out that those sulphide indications are very positive, but you've got to do tighter space drilling. But if we can have 2 mines or 2 pits producing sulphides, it's going to be quite impressive.

R
Reg Spencer
Mining Analyst

I guess the other benefit, Bob, is giving you that extra couple of years of production there just gives you a little bit more time on the sulphide project. It sounds like just listening to you, it sounds like you got a lot more confidence in what -- the way that, that project is now tracking.

R
Robert Scott Vassie
MD, CEO & Director

Yes, I mean, I think as we've observed before, 1.4 million ounces at 3.5 in reserve is not to be sneezed at, but if you've got to make -- what we've said in the past and PFS level was USD 100 million to replenish the fleet and maybe USD 40 million there and USD 60 million to convert the plant. And you don't make that sort of investment lightly if it's -- if a fair bit of the project extension is the payback period. But if you're able to double up the size of deposit because of next-door pit similar, then you have the choice of going up in output or going longer in production or even putting more milling at the front end of the process. So there's a lot of options open there but we -- and another thing we've done is we have kept going with the EIS for this project so that we don't -- if we get good -- finish the drill results and say we want to do this, that we're not having to go back to square one. So there's quite a few things we could look at going to have some project readiness. So it's exciting but we've got to still finish the drilling. I am more confident, but the other thing that gives me a bit of confidence is that we're already in PNG, we know how to work there, but what could you get in Australia for USD 100 million?

R
Reg Spencer
Mining Analyst

Good point. Just very quickly, just again on Simberi, that Life of Mine Plan extend -- well, I am going to call them extension of your mine life there, is that all in reserves? And is that based on the drilling that you've done? And will that be reflected in your resource reserve update next month?

R
Robert Scott Vassie
MD, CEO & Director

Yes, it's on the reserves. If you might recall, we've got a bunch more upside reserves than mine life would suggest, and that's always been because we've got oxide in the walls that we'd only get if we push back the pits to do sulphides. So we've got enough oxide reserves to -- that come into this plan. The other thing I'll point out is that this sulphide drilling we're doing below Sorowar, it's intercepting oxides as well. So almost as a by-product of that, we're going to end up with more oxides as well. How it translates to reserves at this point, we probably won't update reserves at this point because we're -- everything that we're mining through is in the current reserve set. But as we do enough drilling on the sulphides and pull it into a study, we'll have an update then.

Operator

Your next question comes from Michael Slifirski from Credit Suisse.

M
Michael Slifirski
Managing Director

Look, sticking with PNG for a moment, I'm sort of struggling to get my mind around those holes, the sections you've released to-date. Can you put them in the context of the prior drilling and how we should think about the potential average growth? I mean, it's easy to be pleased by high-grade holes and then moderate them with the lower-grade holes, but is it pretty consistent with what you've seen in the drilling that underpinned the existing reserve?

R
Robert Scott Vassie
MD, CEO & Director

That's a good question, Michael. What we've -- there had been no real drilling under Sorowar. The only existing drilling and information and the style of mineralization and how it forms as high-grade shoots had been under Pigiput and that's where the original Allied company had essentially drilled out for the bankable feasibility study when they developed Sorowar before we acquired it. They've drilled out the oxides in Pigiput and Sorowar plus another few smaller pits. In Pigiput, where it was easier, just by the geometry and by the rock conditions, they drilled through the oxides into the sulphides and were getting good hits. So they kept drilling and they're able to string that together as a reserve and we've since updated that. Under Sorowar, you'd have to step out into [ mid-air ] and everything to drill, and it wasn't needed for the bankable studies for the oxide project. So -- and it was more difficult to drill through the area, plus and minus [ RL 50 ] is you keep losing pressure in your RC rig we've had to bring a booster in and then we've struggled to get some holes through. So we've ended up with pretty much no sulphide reserves underneath Sorowar. As went off the ridgelines and formed a pit and a pit floor, we're able to map the wall structures and actually drill off the floor. And if you look at Page 37 on the Appendix you can see the orientation of the lines of drilling that we're doing and then there's some cross-sections through there. And that's all new drilling. So it's not -- it can't be really compared to anything. What we could try and compare it once we get closer-space drilling is to see that the sulphide grades and the structures that hold those grades and the intervals in between, are they presenting similar to Pigiput? But we'd have -- we're planning to do 30x30 and do it very quickly to determine that.

M
Michael Slifirski
Managing Director

Okay. And moving on to the deep hole at Gwalia, I don't really know how to think about those various intersections. So when you got those results, was that something that you felt elated by, confused by? Just how did you -- what was the context compared to what your expectation was for something that drives a longer-term extension?

R
Robert Scott Vassie
MD, CEO & Director

Yes, look, I think in -- I'm just finding a slide here. We hadn't found the end of the orebody, and when we went below 1,800 down to 2,000 a couple of years ago and went down to 2,200, they're 200-meter vertical sections, but along the plunge, it's almost double that. So each time we did those -- we found thinner sections and lower grades, but each time we did it, we added about 1 million ounce resource to the book and converted about 1/3 of that to reserves. Now GMX implementation will change that. But what we don't know, just off 1 hole, this was a tactical hole because if we went down there and got the sequence and there was nothing in it, we'd say, "Okay, we're sort of getting the message here." If it was really -- if it had ballooned out again, well, we could accelerate the decline. But 1 hole doesn't give us resource or reserves. What we have seen here is that the orebody continues, but it continues in the weaker sense, at least at this point, until we dig daughter holes. So we can actually start to optimize our mine plan based on that because we now know that, it's not like there's nothing, it's not like it's ballooned out either. I will point out though, if you look at Slide 33 of the Appendix, you can see in the long section that the orebody was plunging to the south and then it started the more shallow plunge. So we targeted that hole to be in the middle. Now if the plunge started to return to its original plunge, that would mean we're way onto the south side of the orebody. So in a sense, we'll have to do a couple of daughters up there to get -- to figure where we are at because at the periphery of the orebody, it looks often a lot different than it does in the center.

M
Michael Slifirski
Managing Director

Okay. And then the third and final question is related to the GMX change in capital, and I think you mentioned the greater standoff distance to the decline and more ground support. So has something changed in terms of your understanding of strength? So what's driven that change, please?

R
Robert Scott Vassie
MD, CEO & Director

No, we're -- as part of the PFS and then now definitely within the FS, we're doing a lot more seismic modeling but we're still comfortable with those levels of planned seismicity. We've always had pretty benign conditions but we are getting deeper. Part of it is, we are looking at the nature of how -- when we try to optimize our layout, and we certainly don't have the ventilation, we're going to do island pillar in the thinner sections as we announced before. But seismically, as we get deeper, you always got to -- you've got to protect your decline. So we're offsetting that but also moving towards double decline because of -- whilst it's thinner, it's a really long strike length. So that means you've got a set up a lot more, you're going to have longer drives to things. So that's added more driving on the horizontal level. And we are -- we've decided that we're likely, in a lot of areas, to bulk floor to floor. So let's put up costs. Also, previously, where we came out with this there's a couple of key things to mention, is that we've put a lot of things into all-in sustaining. As an example, with the expansion project, the Gwalia Extension Project, the raiseboring and everything we're doing there is in growth capital, but we're making a lot of waste from there and we're trucking it out. We just leave that in sustaining cost. We're stepping up to offset the decline, put more development in this year, a bit of that sent to West Lode as well. But that's essentially setting is up for GMX and Island pillar methods, but we're still putting that in all-in sustaining. So we'll put a bit more of the spend into all-in sustaining cost here. And importantly, we're only showing 1 full year of GMX. To be able to project that officially, we've just got to finish this feasibility study. Otherwise, you're getting beyond your underground drilling into your surface drilling, which always you add ounces when you do underground drilling. So we've just got to focus on the next few months to get the feasibility study done.

Operator

Your next question comes from Trent Allen from Citi.

A
Alexander Barkley
Research Analyst

Alex Barkley from Citi [indiscernible] for Trent. Another question on the GMX all-in sustaining cost. So in FY '22, you've gone from that AUD 650 per ounce up to AUD 870. I know you mentioned the higher development costs in the first 2 years, but how much of this cost should we expect over the life of mine?

R
Robert Scott Vassie
MD, CEO & Director

Well, that's what we're going to have to finish the -- well, the drilling work that we've done that we're doing now and incorporating that into the plan, but also doing the full piece in terms of the option of whether we grind underground or not. So that makes a big difference. This is the first time recently that we've been projecting out past a year. So to have any confidence to be able to do that a bit further, we've got to just finish the study, which is due for December. One thing I would point out also is that, that AUD 650 compared to the other number, both of those numbers did not have the corporate cost allocation because we -- the corporate allocation in the future depends on what assets we're mining in the future.

A
Alexander Barkley
Research Analyst

Just a quick follow-up. The sustaining CapEx looks like it's lifted sort of about $10 million, and there's also an increase in the grade. Does this mean you're expecting a higher mining cost per tonne?

R
Robert Scott Vassie
MD, CEO & Director

Where? In...

A
Alexander Barkley
Research Analyst

At Gwalia, looking at those FY '22 numbers.

R
Robert Scott Vassie
MD, CEO & Director

No, not necessarily. I mean, the mining costs depends on what you're doing. I mean, we're looking at 2 main comminution and pumping options out in the future. But also, that's the first year, so you've got all your set up costs are going until that as well. So it's really how you section out growth versus sustaining capital and sustaining capital going into all-in sustaining operating costs. The actual crushing and potentially grinding underground will come off the fact that you're not trucking to the surface, then you're not trucking over to the plant, and then you're not using the crushing plant on surface. If you use the other technology, you're going to be using some crushing on surface but not grinding underground. So it's that division between what is mining and what is truly processing costs. But we're -- what this really does for us is it improves the NPV of the project more because it enables you to go up in mining rates as grade declines.

Operator

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.

R
Robert Scott Vassie
MD, CEO & Director

Thank you.