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Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Victoria Gold 2020 Year-End Financial Results. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]I would now like to turn the call over to your speakers today, John McConnell, CEO; and Marty Rendall, CFO. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. This is John McConnell. I'm just going to make a couple of comments and then open it for questions. I think everybody has had time to look at our press release. But I guess, 3 key things I want to point out is some pretty nice metrics for the 6 months of commercial production and point out that very high margins, obviously assisted by high gold price, but I think we set ourselves up well. Second thing is in terms of production and costs quarter-over-quarter, for the last 6 quarters, we've increased production and decreased costs, and you'll see that trend continuing in 2021. And then one comment on working capital. Certainly, I've had -- some people are surprised by the amount of working capital required in a heap leach operation, but we now have over 60,000 ounces in the pad that is recoverable. So there's a fair amount of working, and those ounces will come out over time. With that, I think, operator, I'll turn it over for questions.
[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Andrew Mikitchook.
This is Andrew Mikitchook from BMO Capital Markets. John, maybe if I could just get you to speak a little bit about how the restart of stacking is going to whatever degree you're comfortable with sharing with us on the call today.
Yes. No, we -- the original plan has always been that we would shut down stacking for the coldest 3 months of the year, so January through the end of March, but we would always watch the temperature. And we've always felt comfortable that if it was plus 20 or minus -- above minus 20, we could be stacking. So we actually got stacking in early March, and we had made a lot of changes in the plant and that, so there's been some teething during the month of March. But generally, we're having a good month, and we'll get out some production stats for the Q1 here in the next couple of weeks.
And any commentary on how quickly you guys would like to see the stacking rates ramp up and to what kind of levels we should expect over the prime summer -- spring/summer/fall?
Yes. We'll be stacking budgeted numbers beginning in April, and you should look for numbers close to 1 million tonnes per month.
Okay. And that teething issues you think are -- post all the work over the winter is kind of behind you at this point in time or largely behind you, is that fair to say?
Yes. It is mining, and things break, and you redesign them. And actually, the second go around, you get it right. But I would say 85% of our issues are behind us, but I know we'll be making changes throughout the year this year and making further improvements in the plant.
[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Chris Thompson with PI Financial.
John, just a couple of quick questions. Maybe just a follow-on question or 2 from what Andrew was asking. Can you just comment a little bit about how's the pad -- I guess the pad performance during the down period when you weren't stacking? And what was the time frame there where you weren't stacking?
Yes. We stacked very little in January or February. You're always testing the equipment, so a little bit of material got put on in February. But we are mostly doing maintenance work in the plant, and we put in 2 more fixed conveyors up the side of the leach pad. So that work was all completed. In terms of the pad, we continue to leach gold. Obviously, you're not putting new ore on the pad. So it drops off, but we'll put out the numbers here, as I said, in the next 10 days with our gold production and stacking during the first quarter.
So leach kinetics during this down period were as expected?
Yes. I would say, bang on. We -- one of the biggest things you're concerned about is freezing a section of the pad. So we monitor very closely the temperature of the solution going on to the pad and the temperature of the pregnant solution coming off of the pad. And it stayed very constant throughout the entire winter, and I think never went below 4 degrees C. So the pad is fine and bodes well for future years reducing that non-stacking period.
Great. Okay. And then just a final question on the costs, John. I wonder if you could just talk to maybe unit costs on a mining and a processing basis. What were they in Q4? And maybe a comment or 2 on where do you see them going, I guess, as you move into obviously ramping things up this year.
Sure. Maybe I'll get Marty to make the cost -- or make a comment on the specifics, and then I'll talk about the future.
Yes. Just give me a moment here, and I'll remind you what some of the costs were over Q4. So just from the press release, our all-in sustaining costs per ounce in U.S. dollars did fall substantially in Q4. And the all-in sustaining costs, again, were $1,200 for the 6 months since declaring commercial production. And for the fourth quarter, they were $1,120 per ounce. Our cash costs, not including sustaining costs, were $777 for Q4, that's U.S. dollars, and $1,120 for the 6 months. So we're seeing them come down quarter-over-quarter, Q3 to Q4, on a per tonne basis and a per ounce basis. Now we'll have some seasonality in Q1 and Q2. But overall, annually, we expect those unit costs per tonne and per ounce to fall again in 2021.
Have you got the per tonne figures there, Marty?
No, I don't have them. They didn't make it into the press release, and so I don't have the per tonne figures, although it is in the financial statements. We can take the unit cost there. The total costs are in there and you just have to divide by the total tonnes.
In terms of the future, Chris, I think Marty answered that question. We expect as gold production comes up through the year, our cost per ounce will drop. And similar with as we stack more tonnes on the pad, our -- certainly, our processing cost per tonne will continue to come down over the course of the year.
[Operator Instructions] We have no further questions. I'll turn the call back over to presenters for closing remarks.
All right. Thank you, Amy. I think we can conclude the call then and sign off.
Thank you for joining. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.