Austral Resources

Terrific. Thanks. It’s great to see so many smiling faces out in the crowd today. So thanks for staying back. Today is also an opportunity to showcase our refreshed brand identity. So we’ve recently changed that, so this is the first time around the block for that.

To get into it, Austral Resources Australia, we’re a copper producer up in Queensland. We only operate in Queensland in Australia, and we only do copper. And primarily, our unique selling proposition is that we are able to process both copper oxides and copper sulphides. So we have an operating SX-EW, which is the only one in Australia that operates at the moment, and also a concentrator down at Rocklands, which is currently being refurbished. We have a stated objective of getting ourselves into an ASX index. We’re doing that at the moment by M&A. So we’ve made four acquisitions in the last ten months. And as the introduction suggested, we’re currently rebuilding the concentrator as well.

We have a dual-track operating model. It’s driven by organic through resource development and growth and inorganic with a tolling agreement with Glencore and also that M&A. Moving forward, really what we’re all about is, we’ve set twelve months basically of hard work in resetting the business. We’ve got a whole range of different shareholders, including QIC or the Queensland Government, who’ve made two investments into us, alongside Glencore and a couple of the industry super funds. We’ve got significant infrastructure. We’ve got over $1 billion of replacement value across the two operating assets, and really what we’re all about is production. So we’re not looking to become the next explorer. We’re all about production and enabling junior resource owners to come and bring their ore through our facilities.

As I said, we basically have positioned ourselves to become a pure-play copper producer. We’re looking to fulfill essentially a gap in the market. That gap in the market is a sort of multi-billion dollar market cap that’s been left by the likes of Sandfire and Evolution in the past. And really, we can do that through the two existing facilities that we own today. So the two facilities’ current nameplate capacities will see 50,000 tons of copper metal units per annum. At that production rate, we’d be in the top five copper producers in Australia. And recently, the Queensland Government have given us additional money to look at expanding one of those facilities by up to another 50%.

Okay. So to get into it, on the western hub, which is our operating SX-EW, as I said, it is the only one that operates in Australia today. In simple terms, it has a nameplate capacity of 30,000 tons. It’s an existing operation. It isn’t fully utilized at the moment, but we are, got additional mining fronts coming online now, and that production should ramp up to around about that 25,000 tons over the next twelve months.

On the eastern side, the concentrator is currently being refurbished around the crushing circuit. It has a processing capacity at 3 million tons currently, and we’ll be investigating options to bring that up to 4.5 to 6 million tons per annum in the future. At 6 million tons, that’s the same size as Glencore’s Mount Isa operation, to give you an idea of the scale. Uniquely down at Rocklands, we’ve entered into a tolling agreement with Glencore, and really what that’s about is that allows Glencore’s tolling partners and offtake to look at bringing their ore through our Rocklands facility. We’ll use that over the sort of first five to ten years of our production scheduling to basically a top-up mechanism against our own resource. We have six years of production at the nameplate capacity of our own resource, and I’ll take you through those feedstocks very shortly. In addition, we’ve also signed MOUs with other groups down in the region to look at tolling, so including Morona Metals and Metal Bank.

This is our bridge and our pathway to that 60,000 tons per annum copper business. You can see on the left-hand side, that’s our current production today, ramping up at our existing facility at Mount Kelly on the western side and then adding in the concentrator on the eastern side to that 50,000 and then looking at the growth and the additional expansion down to the concentrator.

In terms of the operating SX-EW, the photo up in the top right-hand side shows the cell house in the foreground, the ILS ponds in the midground, and then the heap leach at the back. In simple terms, we’ve only been operating the right-hand side of that cell house as Train A. Train B is currently being energized, and the rectiformer is now on. And so we’re ready to ramp that facility up. This facility has been operating since 2007 when CopperCo had it. So we have a very good history and understanding of the asset and its performance characteristics. In terms of our feedstock for this facility, everything shown on that graph is fully permitted, ready to go. They’re all on existing MLs, so it really is about just mobilizing mining fleets and then pushing that through the operating SX-EW.

In terms of Rocklands, this is a recent acquisition for us. We acquired this back in October of ’25. Over $600 million has been spent at this facility in its life. We acquired it for 25. We’re currently refurbishing the crushing circuit, which is the Achilles heel of this facility, and we’re due to basically bring this back into production in Q3 of ’27. As I mentioned, we recently got $15 million from the Queensland Government to look at expanding this facility out, and we’ll look at that over the next twelve to eighteen months.

In terms of our feedstock for this, so this is all our own resource. At the moment we’ve got an acquisition underway with Hammer Metals. We’re hoping to conclude that by November. That would add additional feedstock not shown on this graph. So this feedstock shows around about 12 million tons of feed for the facility. The Hammer Metals acquisition adds 39 million tons to this feedstock. So this is an asset that has a wonderful opportunity and upside for the company. We certainly will look at increasing the capacity of this facility. The question will be is how much?

In terms of corporate and financing, so we’ll just move on to the board. We recomposed the board over the past twelve months. We’ve really come down to having complementary skill sets across the board. So we have guys that are lawyers, people that are mining engineers, people that are geos. We don’t double up in any of the relevant areas. And the management team have all been together since the company started in 2021.

In terms of the corporate side, we currently got a market capitalization around about A$200 million. We’ve got free cash in the bank of 31. We’ve got another 67 held up on term deposits backing rehabilitation bonds. We have no debt. Previously the company was in receivership back in the middle of ’24. And we’ve spent the last couple of years getting ourselves out of that and sorting the balance sheet out. We’ve raised over $120 million in fresh equity in the last twelve months, so well-capitalized to sort of move forward.

And in terms of the acquisitions and key catalysts going forward, really we’ve made, as I say, four acquisitions in the last twelve months. Most of these were about trying to simplify the business and then grow the feedstock out. The Hammer Metals acquisition is one that is currently underway. The first court date will be Friday in Australian time. And we’re hoping to conclude that by the middle of November.

I’m just gonna come back to this slide because this is really the unique proposition that would explain to most people. Having the oxide plant on the western side and the concentrator on the eastern side, really one of the things that allows us to do is everyone down on that eastern side has mineralized oxide waste rock. So they’ve literally just put it on the side. It’s sitting there. There’s nowhere to process it down on the eastern side. So having the only operating SX-EW, we’ve looked at various different companies that are down on the east and an ability to buy, if you like, cheap ore to feed up on the Mount Kelly side. So if you’re a miner down on the eastern side, if you think about it, essentially you’re pulling out oxides as waste. What do you do with it? You can leave it there, or you can sell it to us, make a couple of bucks. We’ll take it up and obviously treat it as our own and value add to that.

So we’re starting to find that that is a particular avenue that is certainly beneficial to the company, but certainly beneficial to other miners up in the region. And then likewise, we’ve got a whole bunch of sulphide material out of the western side that we can drag down to the east. And so that back-loading opportunity with the trucks essentially means that no truck is running a dead leg. So from an operating cost point of view, we’re starting to become one of the sort of lower cost operators. That is unique to us. As I said, having the two facilities and the two type of capabilities to process the ore is unique to us.

In terms of just coming forward, in terms of catalysts for the year, some of these things have certainly been completed, but we’re tracking pretty well. In terms of copper production, we’re currently producing around 10,000 tons of copper cathode sheet up at the operating SX-EW. That’s a finished product on site. It’s then trucked down to Townsville. The Rocklands restart, so really our focus there is we’ve procured a SAG mill out of Harmony in Cobar. That’s now been taken up to site and is on site. The rest of that crushing circuit is being rebuilt. It will be completed in the middle of 2027, and full production will start up in Q3 of ’27.

In terms of exploration, we’ve got a drill rig on the east and a drill rig on the west now. So we’ve increased that. We’ve started to prosecute a whole bunch of untapped tenements that we haven’t been able to prosecute before due to capital. And we’re starting to show up some reasonable drill hits around projects like Canyon, Snow Queen and Enterprise.

Up on the western side, we’ve completed the Antill mining project. That was a third-party arrangement. We bought the ore back at a discount. So that is an earnings accretive and cash accretive transaction for us. And we’ve recently started multiple mining operations, most notably at the Lady Annie cutback. That Lady Annie cutback was a constrained operation until we settled on the Lady Loretta acquisition off Glencore. Down on the eastern side, we’ve completed our confirmatory drill program down at the Rocklands facility. There are two pits that have residual ore left in them. They’ll be mined out, and they’ll be some of the initial feedstock for the restart. And then otherwise, the restart progress is on time and on budget.

From a corporate point of view, as I said at the start, M&A is certainly in our DNA. And we’re currently looking at a couple of opportunities to continue to grow the business to where it needs to get to. Other than that, thank you for your time. [audience applauding]

Thanks, Dave. Do we have any questions from the floor? We do have time, so I might just ask one. You’ve got 2.6 billion shares on issue. Is there a share consolidation on the horizon?

Yes, it’s coming. Once we complete the Hammer acquisition, we’ll look at a share consolidation at that time.

Sure. And any indication on what the plan is for Hammer? How that’s gonna evolve from here?

Yeah. So currently, Hammer’s primary deposit is a project called Kalman. It has a lot of tons, but I think what we’ll look at doing once we’ve completed the acquisition is resequence some of those projects. So projects like Jubilee, which are sort of closer to us, are higher grade. As a producer, we’re probably interested in grade more than tons as an explorer. So we’ll probably look at resequencing and bringing some of those things forward. And then realistically, the Hammer feedstock will probably start around year five. And as I said, we’ve got the first six years of our own resource to feed Rocklands.

Wonderful. Okay. We’ll reconvene in five minutes. Oh, sorry, we’ve got one more question.

Thanks, David. Just wondering if you could tell us what your costs were and what kind of margin you’re looking at with today’s pretty high copper price. Thanks.

Can’t quite hear that.

I think he was asking about the costs.

Oh, costs. Around four sixty Australian. There isn’t a lot of sustaining costs ’cause obviously the facilities are all up and running. But around about that. Was there a second part to the question? No. Okay.

Beautiful. Thanks, Dave. Okay. Right, we’ll be back in five minutes.

Sure.