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Good morning, and welcome to West African Resources investor webinar and conference call. [Operator Instructions] I'll now hand over to West African Executive Chairman and CEO, Richard Hyde. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Simon, and thanks to all our shareholders for joining us for our March 2024 quarterly call. So as you can see from the quarterly report, we've achieved another strong quarter of low-cost, high-margin gold production at our Sanbrado operation in Burkina Faso.
We've produced 56,595 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of USD 1,291 per ounce. Our gold sales remain fully unhedged, and we continue to benefit from a strong gold price, with unhedged gold sales of 4,509 ounces and average price of more than USD 2,000 an ounce. This contributed to our cash balance of more than AUD 340 million at the end of the quarter, with an additional AUD 41 million worth of unsold gold bullion on hand, and that's generally just due to timing of gold shipments.
Production from the open pit and underground continue to perform well against our mine plan. Underground mine ounces from M1 and South were up 22% this quarter, reflecting a 16% higher head grade and increased ore tonnes, with 105,000 tonnes mined at 8.1 grams per tonne for 27, 484 ounces of gold.
Open pit production decreased this quarter, with 555,000 tonnes of ore mined at 1.2 grams per tonne gold for 21,941 gold ounces. The decrease in production follows our mine plan and reflects the reduced ore tonnes from the planned completion of mining at the M5 South open pit.
Processing continued to perform well, as usual, with 844,000 tonnes milled at an average head grade of 2.2 grams per tonne gold and recovery of 94%. So we can really see that oxygen plant working this year with recoveries tracking slightly ahead of budget. We closed the quarter with a ROM stockpile inventory of 61,869 ounces of contained gold.
So in other activities during the quarter, we released our 2024 resources, reserves and 10-year production outlook for Sanbrado and Kiaka, which forecasts WAF producing 4 million ounces of gold between now and 2033. This is a 415,000 ounce increase from the previous plan.
Our mineral resources increased by 181,000 ounces to 12.8 million ounces of gold, with Kiaka coming online early in second half 2025. Our group production is estimated at 338,000 ounces for next year.
Construction is continuing to track really well at Kiaka, and we've made great progress there over the last few months. And if anyone has seen the social media from yesterday, you might have seen 2 of the large SAG mill shells arriving on site. And I can report that the remaining 2 SAG mill shells have been delivered to sites.
So all SAG mill shells are on site now. And that's been a good effort. So I'd like to thank [ Amtrak ] and the team for the international shipping and also AGL for the overland transport from [ Tema ] to site have done an excellent job.
In addition to the first drawdown of USD 100 million reported in the previous quarter, we drew a further USD 50 million under the USD 265 million loan facility that we have with Sprott and CorisBank. This has strengthened our cash position for the construction of Kiaka, which remains on time and on budget.
We began construction of phase 2 buildings at the main camp and continue to advance major earthworks in the areas of tailings storage facility, water storage dam, which are now nearing completion. We successfully received shipments, as I mentioned, of mill components, also gearboxes.
We picked up [indiscernible] structural steel and plate work. We're currently seeing CIL tanks being welded. And as the quarter progresses, we'll keep updating shareholders with our progress with photos and videos of construction progress. We've also finalized several crucial procurement installation contracts during the quarter.
And we've seen a ramp-up in deliveries of care equipment on site. We expect a lot of progress over the next quarter with perimeter fencing almost completed. Major installations, supply packages to be completed. We're really pleased that our development at Kiaka continues to remain on budget and on schedule, and we are targeting first gold next year in Q3.
While construction continues to progress well, we were deeply saddened to report that an employee of our construction contractor was fatally injured while working at Kiaka in January. We've been working closely with the relevant authorities and contracting companies involved to investigate the incident and ensure we can prevent that from happening again.
Now the safety of our staff has always been utmost importance to us, and we're dedicated to providing a strong safety culture across our business to ensure that everyone working on our sites carries their activity safely and responsibly and makes it home from their shift [ next time ].
As we look to further development in our projects, our diamond drilling at the M1 South northern shoot returned outstanding results, including results of 9.5 meters at 81.9 grams per tonne from 62 meters. With further high-grade results reported last week, these results confirm potential for an additional mining area at M1 South underground, and we're hoping to fast track that into this year's mine plan.
We are set to commence additional infill drilling over the coming quarter in preparation for underground development and look forward to updating on our progress with drill results expected during Q3. We also received our mining permit for Toega during the quarter, and so now we possess all of the significant operating permits required to commence mining at Toega, which we expect to do in 2025.
Unfortunately, our CFO, Padraig O'Donoghue, is traveling. So he's not available this morning. As you can see from the quarter, it's been a very strong quarter, closing with more than AUD 340 million in cash, AUD 41 million worth of unsold gold bullion. We had free cash flow after tax installments of AUD 41 million. So it's been a very strong quarter from a financial perspective as well.
We've only got another 4 or 5 quarters to go to the first gold at Kiaka. And as we mentioned previously, that's tracking really well at the moment. So at this point, Simon, I'm happy to pause and take any questions from any interested shareholders or investors.
Great. Thanks, Richard. [Operator Instructions]
Our first question, congratulations on the quarter, Richard. Do you have any news to share expanding on the MOU with Orezone or when or what could we look forward to there?
All right. Thanks, Simon. Thanks, [ Chris ]. Look, at this stage, we kind of paused things with Orezone. We were really looking for immediate benefits through accessing the grid power for Sanbrado.
So currently, at Sanbrado, we're generating a power on site through our power station, which is it's a 25-megawatt power station that's run with HFO and diesel sets. Currently, with the current fuel price, it's costing us about $0.35 per kilowatt hour to create power. The grid power in Burkina is $0.18 or $0.19 per kilowatt hour off the grid.
So clearly, there's a cost saving if we do transfer onto the grid. We know that there's more work to do at Ouagadougou at the main power station to improve the reliability of the power that comes through from Ouagadougou towards both of our sites. We're actually investigating that at the moment.
Also, are there some benefits in the future potentially from mill space because, obviously, the mills that we're putting in at Kiaka are the same mills that Orezone hope to put in, in their expansion project. So look, we work very closely with Orezone in country on a number of fronts, particularly around administration, communication with the government, security and safety of our people. So all they're all very important areas that we keep our communication -- largely communication open.
We hope that in the future, there's more benefits to be had from their development, which is right next door to us. But at this stage, our main focus will be accessing the high-voltage power from the grid, hopefully, towards back into next year if we can get it all organized.
Okay. Thanks, Richard. That concludes the Q&As that have been submitted. If there's anything further, please feel free to send an e-mail to the company. Richard, I might just hand it back to you for closing remarks.
Thanks, Simon. Well, overall, it's been another star quarter of performance and a consistent start to the year for West African Resources. Construction is progressing on schedule and budget as we mentioned previously. And we remain on track to become a 400,000 ounce a year gold producer from the second half of next year. Thanks again for your interest in West African Resources and for joining us on the call today.
All right. Thanks, Richard. Thanks all for attending.