Resolute Mining Limited (RSG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Resolute Mining Limited December 2021 Quarterly Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Stuart Gale, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Darcy, and good morning, everyone. Thank you all for joining us for the December quarterly update, which also contains our 2022 guidance numbers. I'm joined this morning with Terry Holohan, who, as we all know, is our COO. Terry is joining us from Hungary, so very early for him. Terry will give us the run through from an operations perspective, and also joined here this morning with Doug Warden, who is our CFO, and he'll run through our financials and some guidance numbers for 2022. Before we get into that detail, I'll just make a couple of opening remarks. Firstly, from a health and safety perspective, I would just like to call out the performance from a safety perspective. It's been certainly a challenging year, but we've been able to maintain a good performance right across the board from a health and safety perspective. And it's particularly pleasing, given the uptick that we've seen most recently in COVID throughout -- well, throughout West Africa, but throughout the world really. We are seeing increased levels of COVID on site. But certainly, the systems and protocols that we've put in place have ensured that we're managing this uptick in COVID that we're keeping our people safe and looking after their health. And obviously, importantly, we're maintaining our operations. So we haven't seen any impact of that uptick in COVID in our operations. And we obviously have to keep a watching brief on it, but we're not expecting to see any significant changes as a result of that. It's also really pleasing and we've noted in the quarterly that we've now double-vaccinated almost 2,000 people. We've got another couple of hundred people who have had one vaccination and are getting ready for the their second vaccination. So we'll keep that program going. And it's, again, a really important program for our organization. A couple of remarks on the quarter. I think as we look at this December quarter, I describe it really as quite a mixed bag. It was a pretty tough start to the quarter across -- well, across the board in Mali. We had an extended wet season. So the operations were impacted, in particular, the oxide operations were impacted by wet weather. And that occurred through October and also into November. So that was a real challenging period of time for us. But very pleasingly, across all 3 of the operations, the monthly performance in December was the highest across the year. So the teams really dug in deep and pulled out some terrific performances during that December quarter -- sorry, the month of December, which enabled us to get back on track and to deliver on our targets. Individually, look, Mako just continued to deliver. It had a very good December quarter. The team have done a terrific job there and achieved a little bit ahead of their own expectations for that quarter. So that was very positive. As alluded to, the oxide operations at Syama really were impacted over October and November through wet weather. But again, really got together in terms of the work that was done at the Tabakoroni splay pit, and then also as we opened up in our northern pit. So we've gone back into the northern pits and are mining now at Beta, so good performances, particularly through the December timeframe there. And look, Terry will go into it, but the sulfide operations at Syama really struggled early on with some challenging -- or some challenges around the power and also unplanned maintenance. And so there was a number of events, all sort of unrelated that had some significant impacts on our performance through that period. But again, really pleasing when we look at the December numbers and in particular when we look at the December grades from the underground and the head grades that we processed to see those grades come back up into that sort of 2.7 grams per tonne range. Also, what's pleasing is that we've seen that December momentum carry through into January. So whilst we're not talking about January, it is pleasing that, that sort of that momentum has carried forward, and we're seeing some pretty reasonable results so far into January. In terms of the year, obviously, we finished our reporting period and we ended up with around 320,000 ounces of gold produced for 2021. That was within our guidance range although obviously towards the lower end of that. And from a cost perspective, our costs were at $1,370 an ounce, which was slightly above the higher end of our guidance range of $1,365. So we're broadly in line although at the higher and lower end of those ranges. I'll leave Doug to talk about the balance sheet, but it's obviously fair to say that we're nowhere near where we want to be in terms of our balance sheet position, and that's really largely a function of the gold that's been produced over the last couple of years. So our focus really is around ensuring that we're hitting our targets and delivering on those gold production numbers as we move forward. Again, I'll leave Doug to talk through the guidance. But at a high level, the guidance has probably changed a little bit from where we were last year from a guidance perspective. It really focuses around our understanding of some key aspects of our operations particularly around the sulfide plant, and we've modified some of the assumptions that go into that guidance number, particularly around our throughput and recoveries. We obviously have a planned shutdown as well, which is going to give us an opportunity to do some work from a maintenance perspective, which is going to be very important for us as we work through 2022. But importantly, when we look at this from a life-of-mine perspective, our life-of-mine numbers come out broadly at this stage -- our life-of-mine numbers come out broadly in line with the previous life-of-mine numbers which were published back in April 2021. So across the life, we get back on track, but we do have a bit of work to do during 2022 to bring us up into line with our expectations. And lastly, I will just touch briefly on the Mali political situation. Obviously, you'd all be aware that we have the ECOWAS states have imposed sanctions on Mali. Those sanctions were imposed because the administration has pushed back the election timeframe. This is not something that's uncommon to us. We've had sanctions a couple of times before in 2021. The key for us around these sanctions is to ensure that we have our consumable stocks that are available to us. And pleasingly, we have managed those consumable stocks. We actually saw, I think, an increase in our working capital to reflect that towards the end of the year. And we've implemented our business continuity plans also, which have been pretty well tested over the last little period of time. So we're not expecting to see any impacts from these sanctions on our operations, but we need to keep a watching brief on all of that. So I think with that, I will hand over to Terry to give an operations update.

Super. Thanks, Stuart, and good morning, everybody. Again, I'll go through the 3 mining operations in the same order, starting with the Mako, got the Syama oxide and then the Syama sulfide. As Stuart said, the Mako project just keeps ongoing. It exceeded our expectations little bit towards the end of the month in December, and we managed to squeeze out a little bit more metal. The key there is, as you know, last year was all about joining up the cutback, which was the expansion to the mine brought on by the gold price when it jumped a couple of years ago in our forecast from $1,200 to $1,500. We recognize that we could put a splay onto the main ore body. That where we started. And we brought that in now. The main ore body there will be joined to our ore body on the same bench level by January this year, at the end of this month. So we're very, very close. And we started taking ore out of there from late November. And that has allowed us in the second half of the quarter to start taking higher than 2 grade gram a tonne material out of the pit, as you can see selectively. Because we comfortably mine a lot more ores than we're actually processing, we can selectively take the higher grade ore and put it through the mill. And this is the system that we're -- or sorry, the situation that we're in now, we see for the next 6 months plus. So we're back into the higher grade areas. Obviously, that does make a big difference. Let's see recoveries come up because we virtually got a fixed tail on the milling circuit there for certain grinds. The grinds that we achieve, we have a fixed tail. So the higher the head grade, the higher the recovery. And we did have a slight step-up there in terms of more ounces produced in December than we expected. And obviously, that had an impact to bring our costs closer to the $1,000 an ounce that we are going to target and try and get to over this next year. In terms of the mill, that was very pleasing. As I mentioned in the last quarter, the mill slices come in. We've still got it on manual mode. We're fixing all the algorithms, and we will have it on automatic in this quarter. But that's allowed us to use the power in the mill far more efficiently. We're getting an extra 10% power absorption rather than wasting power on making noise on the liners. And we're maintaining the grind, and December was very pleasing. We actually managed to get 190,000 tonnes through that mill at the correct grind even though we've upped the basalt level, the harder material in the mill. And with that grind, we maintained 92% recovery, which is the higher end. And as I said, it gave us a little bit of a surge with about 13,000-plus ounces coming out of the operation there. Looking forward, we expect these improvements to continue. And right now, we know -- or we knew in advance that the cyclones are going to -- or the bottleneck -- the next bottleneck in the circuit, I mentioned to you before, that the mill is not pushed yet. It's using the existing power that it has been using traditionally to mill more material. So now we're looking at stepping it up, and we're looking at swapping out those cyclones, making it a little bit bigger. We need a little bit of research there, but we've done that research work, and we're looking at swapping those out in the near future. So we expect these upticks in tonnages to keep going. So as a result, over budget, exceeded our expectations. Everybody is really excited there on site. And we just see that this plant will be able to just systematically step it up -- step up the efficiencies, especially in the milling circuit over these next 6 to 9 months. If we move across to the oxides and Syama. And just before I go specifically to Syama oxides, just to mention that Syama itself did record a record mill at 3.6 million ounces -- sorry, million tonnes, 6 million -- 3.6 million tonnes. That is a record for that site. Again, just systematically improving the throughputs in the operation. The Syama oxide, it didn't have a record tonnage but it came close. And as you know, we've had problems in the middle of the year with the Cashew pit that's well behind us now, that we've got the Tabakoroni and the Beta pits. We've done all the stripping -- we did all the stripping, as you know, in -- mostly in the wet season, by taken the overburden off. But in this last quarter, we're in a pleasing position that we're actually mining more ore for the first time this last year than we actually want to process. So it's allowed us to again select the high-grade materials. As a result of that, in December, the grade was 1.98 grams a tonne, which is very pleasing, again, recovery stepping up slightly in the back end of the quarter, and we expect to maintain that going forward. The bottleneck in that operation is the crushing plant, and we're in that process now of replacing gearbox and motors, and we're looking at debottlenecking that crushing section to actually step up more production over this year. So that -- the oxide, a tough year in the middle of the year, rain -- but as I say, in the last quarter, despite the rainy season stretched into this quarter, we've stripped off most of the overburden and we managed to get significant amounts of reasonable grade ores on to surface now. Then we come to the Syama sulfide circuit, this circuit produced 136,000 ounces this last year, which is a record for the underground. The original design was somewhere between $156 million and $160 million. We're just about getting up to those sort of levels, and we will get to those levels next year. If we didn't do the roaster shut next year, we would be at the 160, which is that design. However, that's going to be delayed in real terms for the year until the following year. However, in the following year, we do expect to be a little bit higher than the 160,000 there. But coming back to the mining and the processing. Again, both records, 5% up on the previous years. And in that quarter, we did push the tonnes a little bit. We did stop the plant for 7 days -- for a 7-day shut in the middle. And as a result of that, a lot of work was done on the roaster, around the ancillaries. Some inspections were done on the roaster. If you remember, we delayed the major roaster shut from originally March last year, and it's going to be February this year by 12 months. So it's really just a check that it was going to be okay to -- for the shut next year were there any other extra jobs, we highlighted 1 or 2. But as a result of that shut, we managed to run that plant at 98.4% production rate -- or availability, sorry, for December. And compared to an average typically of sort of 90% for the year, it stepped up significantly. It shows what can be done. It's not yet sustainable, but I think those sort of levels will be sustainable after the February shut. As Stuart mentioned, the key things on going back now to the mining, the run of mine grade, 2.71 grams a tonne, that's on the original design number. For the second time this year, we started out in January at those sort of grades. We lost it through the year. We've got it back up to there. And that's quite pleasing. I did say to you previously, I only expected to be sustainable in March. I still stand by that statement. This is very pleasing. I didn't expect it quite as high as 2.71. I was thinking it's still 2.6 something. But I think it will range between 2.6, 2.7 over the next couple of months before we get to March, where we've got the correct ratio of longitudinal and transverse stoping in the SLC, the sublevel cave and we'll be able to continue that going forward. On the modeling, the desig model. We've now got a calibrated model. And we're using that. The 2 funds [ Scott ] and [ Cito ] are now on site. They are ground truthing those numbers. They've done all the modeling for different what we call shutoff grades, the correct grade to pull the ore from the stopes and looking at optimizing that going forward. And we think that's going to be a fantastic operating tool. They're introducing it to the guys on site so they can actually use it to put all the grade control data strain to the machine into the calculator and look at optimizing that and managing it well. December and the last quarter, we've been -- there's still the weakest link on the sulfide circuit is the plant despite the roaster to give it as 98% availability and operation, the milling circuit only gave us 85% for that quarter. And hence, there's a big opportunity there. And what we've been doing with the 7-day shut we had and with the February shut that we've got, there's a lot of replacements of motors, gearboxes, et cetera that we're planning. So moving of pumps out of position to actually improve that availability. If I look at that plant, given it's a -- technically, it's a single stream, primary mill, secondary mill, flotation circuit and roast. With that sort of combination of streams, I would expect the optimal availabilities to be at the 92s instead of the mid-80s, and we've got plans in place over the next 6 to 9 months to get back up there. So we certainly see opportunity there with the work that we're focused on. Unfortunately, we couldn't rely on the OSA and the cleaners, the enhancement projects that we wanted to commission in the December quarter. we found some faulty equipment that arrived with the onstream analysis, the X-ray tubes, and we couldn't commission that circuit. We -- that equipment has since arrived on site this last week, early in January. And we tied it in, in the shutdown in October. So we weren't able to stop the plant again to set those up. But I would suggest that we'll be looking at commissioning those 2 pieces of equipment over the next couple of months. And after the February shut, then we should see an uptick in recovery. If you remember, we're still sitting typically around the 78% recovery mark on the sulfide circuit on the plant, and we expect that to step up to 80%. So I think the area of focus for us at the moment is maintenance and availability of plant. We have just completed all the audits right through the -- all the operating sections. We are now in the stages of looking at the -- all the major changes that we need to make immediately. And these are -- a lot of those will be completed in February when we have the shut. And as we've mentioned, that shut will essentially prevent us from producing another 16,000 ounces from that circuit. We are going to do 145 for the year. I'm confident in that. And if we didn't have the shut, then we'd be at the 160s where we're at design. And it's not -- I don't believe it's going to stop there. When we do the changes to the roasting circuit, which is the bottleneck, we are going to put an 18% expansion facility in there, which should then allow us to run our mills a little bit harder. We are also going to do the mill realigns at that same time. So we don't have to stop the mills later in the year, middle of the year to actually realign them. The maintenance shut itself. That's already -- we've got all the gamma charts in place. We've been planning this for a year now. We've been talking about it twice a week. And with everything is on site, 90% of the labor is coming from Mali. We do have people starting to come into Mali right now. They're still managing to get through with no trouble. And I'd say all equipment is on site. If there are 1 or 2 people that can't make it from the people outside, we do have management that can step into those roles. So we think everything is in line, we're comfortable, and we're ready for this year. So in summary, I think we're on track for all the improvements that we've been talking about over the last couple of quarters. A couple of good key indicators, I think the grade on the underground was pleasantly -- a pleasant surprise. I think the tonnage that we managed to get through the Mako operation in December, that's an annualized tonnage of 2.2 million tonnes, whereas we're presently at the 2 million tonnes. So that just demonstrates where we think there's more opportunities to be pushed. And again, the Syama oxide, now we've got decent material. We can find decent grades. The recoveries are going to come up and we're actually debottlenecking the crushing system as we speak. So we expect to be able to get more tonnes through there. So I think as far as I'm concerned, everything is on track, and we're just going to keep systematically improving these operations over time. Thank you, Stuart. That's the very quick brief on where we are on the operations.

Great. Thanks, Terry. I was going to say a very comprehensive, well done. So with that, I'll hand over to Doug to run through the financial component and our guidance.

Thanks, Stuart, and good morning, everyone. I'll just take a few minutes to take you through the cash flow for the quarter, the net debt position at 31 December, a bit of an update on the hedge book, and finally, the 2022 guidance. Starting with cash flow. So as you can see from the chart, the operating cash flow from the operations for the quarter was just under $35 million. It's worth noting that whilst this was lower than what it was in the September quarter at just under $44 million, we did experience an $8.2 million build in the bullion in the December quarter, whereas we had a drawdown, you might recall, of $23 million in the September quarter. So a bit of movement in bullion there through the quarters influencing that number, and therefore, gold sales. Royalties of $4 million were marginally lower than September due to these lower sales. VAT and taxes were up to $17 million. This was due to some legacy tax payments of $12.5 million, which we talk about in the quarterly. CapEx was $12.7 million, which was roughly 50-50 sustaining/nonsustaining split, exploration, 4.4% as we continue our brownfields exploration drilling programs at Syama and Mako and some greenfields work in Guinea. The working capital was a bit higher. A $15.6 million draw reflects a reduction in creditors during the quarter. The debt drawdown of $62.8 million reflects the drawdown on the revolver and in-country overdraft facilities in October and November as a result of the production performance in those months. Interest and government dividends and withholding tax, fairly self-explanatory. Moving to net debt. After taking into account cash and bullion balances, net debt increased by $15.9 million in the quarter to $228.8 million. This increase largely reflects Syama's production performance in the early part of the quarter and the reduction of working capital that I talked about and the legacy payments associated with tax of $12.5 million. In addition to those legacy payments, we also paid out a total of $9.2 million to the former underground contractor as we transition to owner-operator there. Not all of that was capital. Some of that was consumables. But the total cash outlay was just over $9 million. And the total of those amounts that -- the legacy tax payments and the underground costs totaled just under $22 million. Hedge book update. Just a reminder that our banking facility still requires us to have a minimum of 30% over the next 18 months forecast production hedged. At December, we had 168,000 ounces hedged at an average price of just under 1,800 plus another 10,000 ounces at EUR 1,530. Moving to 2022 guidance. So gold production guidance, as we detailed at the back of the quarterly is 345,000 ounces at a group level and an all-in sustaining cost of $1,425. We've included a reasonably detailed explanation for each operation in the quarterly document, but I'd draw your attention to a few points that are relevant to this guidance. So first of all, both production and costs are impacted by the February roaster shut, as you would imagine. If we were to normalize for that, as Terry has talked about, you'd be looking at just over 160,000 ounces from the sulfide circuit, which would reduce that sulfide all-in sustaining to $1,280 versus the $1,345 guided. And at a group level, for your interest that all-in sustaining, if it was normalized, would reduce from $1,425 to $1,400. We've made some revisions to the mine plan assumptions since the April 21 life-of-mine plan that was released to the market, and these reflect the operational performance during 2021, and Terry has talked to a lot of that on this call and previously. We've obviously seen some inflationary effects on costs in the current environment as well, and they are factored into the cost as we move forward into 2022. As I indicated, the production is 15% lower than the April '21 release on the life-of-mine plan for 2022. And as a result largely of that lower production, there's a 23% increase in the all-in sustaining cost. We will release an updated life-of-mine plan towards the end of February together with the reserve and resource statement, which is due out then as well. But importantly, over the life of mine, we expect production and cost to be broadly similar with that April 2021 life of mine update. Just specifically in relation to Mako, I think it's worthy of comment there around the 2022 guidance. So you'll note that we're guiding 125,000 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,325, which is clearly higher than the 2021 actual number of $1,139. What's important to understand here is this is due to some CapEx on a tailings dam lift -- this increase is largely due to that tailings dam lift and some process plant enhancements that are treated as sustaining capital and notwithstanding the fact that they're capitalized and amortized over the useful life of those spends. The World Gold Council dictates that they are to be treated as all-in sustaining costs in the year that you incur them. So that's what's knocking that around a bit, together with some noncash movements associated with drawdowns of high-cost ore stocks. Again, if we were to sort of normalize the Mako all-in sustaining cost 2022 guidance for these impacts, your $1,325 that we've guided would be more like $1,219, with the difference then being versus 2021 largely inflationary impacts that we're seeing, particularly through the mining contract. That's all for me. With that, I'll hand back to Stuart to wrap up the call.

Great. Thanks, Doug. Obviously, quite a lot to work through there from an operational perspective and also from a financial perspective. I think it's fair to say 2021 has been a fairly challenging year for us. As we look to the future and we look to 2022, we have, I think, a much better understanding of what some of that key drivers are and where our focus will be. As we've been speaking about for the last few quarters, it's really key for us to ensure we've got the right people who are adopting the right process with the right systems. And as we sit here today, we've probably had the right people in place now, I'd say, for about the last quarter. It's been tough to find people, but we now have them there. And people, hopefully, with the relaxation of quarantine, particularly obviously in Western Australia, it will be easier for people to get to site and to be a bit more focused and be able to touch and feel the operations, which, of course, is really important. So with those right people in place, then really now it's around systems and process and it's around capitalizing on some of the things that we've implemented during the course of 2021. So those things being the power station and making sure that that's running as smoothly as it possibly can be and looking at how we can ensure we lower our cost through that. We have the mill slicer, we have the OSA and we had the onstream analyzer, that is. We also have -- well, those initiatives really haven't flowed through into 2021, but we think we'll get some good benefits in 2022 and beyond. So it's a matter of capitalizing on those initiatives, and we'll be very focused on that, in particular, around the shutdown at Syama and the implementation of a more planned maintenance program. I think that's really key for us. Terry has touched on it. It's important that we move from this unplanned regime that we're currently in, which takes a whole lot of time and effort up into more of a planned program. So that's really where our focus is as we move forward. So look, I think with that, why don't I hand back to Darcy to handle the Q&A for us.

[Operator Instructions] There are no questions at this time -- pardon me. We have a question from Alexander from Citi.

Stuart and team, could you please give an update on the VAT and tax assessments levered by the Malian and Senegalese tax authorities? And what are the next steps to resolve this?

Yes. Thanks, Alex. Look, I'll hand that one over to Doug. But an opening comment would be that we continue to work through the Mali VAT issues. They've all been fully provided for, and we'll provide a bit better update in our accounts when they come out. But there really is no specific update on that VAT. Doug, I don't know if you've got anything to add to that?

No, not really. Alex, what I'd say is that as we work through these issues, obviously, a number of amounts have been included in previous accounts, a half year and the year-end before that, and we'll be doing -- we'll be looking at that as part of the year-end process. So I don't want to front-run that, but we continue to have those discussions with those relevant authorities, but no particular update on the outcomes.

I think just one point, Alex. The amounts that have been called out in this quarter for tax payments are not specifically related to current periods. They actually go back a number of years. So these are historical things that we just had to deal with. We pushed the tax office and our people in country as hard as we can to come to a sensible resolution on those. So what you see there is things that are caused by surprise, if you like.

Your next question comes from Adam Baker from Global Mining Research.

Just on the balance sheet, just for the short-term debt repayments, just checking, is it just the USD 50 million of term loan repayments in '22 in the last year, is June 2023, is that correct?

Yes, that's right, Adam. $25 million every 6 months, which started last September and will continue in March and September of this year, the revolver which is obviously something we look at from a flexibility around the tenure on that. And we're always talking to our banks about that sort of instrument. Yes, technically, that's due at the moment in March '23 and 2 further lots of $25 million in '23 as well with the final $25 million payable in March '24 is the complete profile as it currently stands.

Sure. Just moving on to Mako. So the USD 16 million tails lift, how many years of capacity will that give you?

Thanks, Adam. Why don't I hand over to Terry just to talk through some of those aspects?

Yes. Thanks, Adam. The lift we're going to do now, we've got -- it's going to be in 2 stages, but it will take us at the end of life of mine. If you remember, at this stage, we've got about 4 years of mining and about 5 years of processing left because the stockpile buildup through the life of mine. So it will take us comfortably to the end of that. There is a possibility of taking it further, but that is something that we need to firm up first on the exploration that we've got mineral resources or reserves to extend the life of mine. But on the present scope, it's really to see it through to the end of the life of mine.

Sure. And just on Syama, the 35-day mill shutdown you expect, you said that you're well prepared for that. Is this going to be an ongoing annual thing? Should we expect this in '23, '24 kind of annual 35-mill -- day mill shutdown. Yes, that would be good.

Yes. I think certainly from a preparation perspective, you'll recall this was originally scheduled for sort of October, November. We got caught up in wet weather. So we've got ourselves in a pretty reasonable position to be able to -- well, we were ready to undertake the shutdown in October, November this year. As a result of the weather, it was decided to push that out into February. So therefore, we're in a good place. We just need to make sure we've got the right people that come in and can do the work, and we're comfortable with the preparations around all of that. So that's where we are with that. But in terms of the cadence of the shutdown, I hand over to Terry for that.

Yes. Thanks, Stuart. That's a good question, Adam. Historically, we have budgeted every 2.5 years to take the smelter off -- the roaster offline to fix it. And if you remember, the last time we had it offline for any significant time was November '19. At this point in time, our life of mine does reflect taking it off every 2.5 years for a similar large shut. However, my background is pyrometallurgy back in the '80s. And if you do a good job of fixing it, which we are planning to do now, this roaster should last between 5 and 15 years. And if I look at the condition monitoring that we've got in place, that's allowed us comfortably to delay this shut now from March '21 all the way through to February '22. So it's -- we're 100% ready for it, and we've managed to combine it with other shuts to reduce overall downtime for the project. But I'm hoping and planning that while we're on site and we actually sign off this work with AutoTech as the main OEM partner on this to do the lining correctly, that we all sort of agree that there's no reason now to actually plan it for 2.5 years. We should be planning it for at least 5. So I would suggest that in the second quarter, we'll be able to give you some better news on that on what we think the incidence should be. But I'm hoping for at least any every 5 years.

Adam, I would also just like to point out, as we look at the performance through the end of December, what's interesting to note is that the roaster has performed pretty well, right? So the reality of the situation is our challenges at the Syama sulfide operations really haven't been roaster-related. I think the roaster sometimes gets a bad rap, but the challenges have been more on the front end and with everything in the lead up to the roaster. So if we can take the roaster down, improve, as Terry has just discussed, everything that's within that roaster as well as tidy up a few of the other key bottlenecks on the sort of leading to the roaster, then we should be in a better position, I would have thought, for consistent operations of that plant.

Your next question comes from Ashik Shadi from MHS.

I just wanted to actually ask about the tax from the Mali government. I think Stuart has already answered that. Thanks very much.

Thanks, Ashik.

Your next question comes from Andrew Bowler from Macquarie.

Adam asked most of my questions on the roaster shut. I guess maybe just to expand a little bit. I mean you've obviously had a little bit more time to prepare for this shut. Is there any chance of beating that 35-day shut and given the extra time. And then also, how are you thinking about the sort of the wind down and the ramp back up following the shut?

Yes. Thanks, Andrew. You sound like you're asking some of the questions I constantly pepped Terry with, but I'll let you give -- I'll let Terry give his responses.

Yes. Thanks, Stuart. Thanks, Andrew. The shut is 35 days nominal, and that includes about 6.5 days heating up and cooling down. So that's 35 days is feed off, feed on as far as the roaster is concerned. Of that 35 days, 28 days is tools on. So that's all maintenance work, actually actively working on the equipment. The critical path item is the refractory liner of the main body. There's always a proviso on or disclaimer from the contractors on roasters because they'll always say, well, you can never guess what's inside there until you open it up, and then you find problems if it's there. But when we shut it down in October last year, we didn't find any bits of bricks, et cetera, at the bottom that we usually do or we have done historically, let's say. And the condition monitoring is saying that, yes, it's good and we could actually push it a little bit further. It's more the ancillary equipment around the roaster that really needs a lot of work, and changing the cyclone on top of the fluid bed is critical for us now. So is there some movement on that? If there is, it will be 2 or 3 days on that 28 days. But again, that could possibly go either way. Make no mistake, if we'd be behind for some reason, we will make sure we do all the critical items and box it up again. And as long as we can get that refractory down on time, which I think we're fairly comfortable with the 28 days, I think my exposure with people putting refractories in roasters and in furnaces, they generally do put a bit of fat in there but they won't tell you about that until we're actually on site. But it will only be a day or so. It won't be 10 days, for example.

There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Gale for closing remarks.

Great. Thanks, Darcy, and thank you all for joining us this morning. Hopefully, some of your questions have been answered. If there's anything that you'd like to follow up with, don't hesitate to reach out to James Virgo or myself. We're very happy to get back in touch with you. I think -- and just in a final closing, look, 2022 is going to be a big year for us. It sees a number of those initiatives that we've spoken about come into play and start to deliver improvements for us. We've now got a team on the ground who have been there for between 3 and 6 months in the operations, who are getting a handle on those operations and are really focused on making sure that we deliver. I think there's quite a bit of work that needs to be done from a Syama plant perspective, and Terry has just worked through all of that. So we have some good plans in place that should see us deliver on a more consistent basis as we move through 2022 and then onwards through the life of that asset. One thing I haven't touched on, which I should have, is exploration. And from an exploration perspective, our focus remains very much on that near mine development in the northern part of Syama. Obviously, Tabakoroni is going very well and from a macro perspective, looking at opportunities which are near mine. So there are a number of those opportunities, which we've spoken about in previous calls. But that is our focus, is to look at how we can fill up our existing operations from the land packages that we have or are about to get hold of. So that's really where the focus is from an exploration perspective. Balance sheet, obviously, continues to be a focus. And lastly, I would also just like to thank our teams. The teams have gone through a couple of years of really challenging operating environment. 2021 was absolutely no different to all of that, and there is a number of new people who are on the ground. '22 is shaping up as a bit of a challenge as well, as discussed with COVID, but everyone is really focused. And we all know what our task is at hand. So well done to them on the performance through 2021, and we're expecting really positive things in 2022. So I think with all of that, thanks again for joining the call, and I'll leave you Darcy to disconnect, everyone.

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