A - Mark Learmonth
Analyst
I do see some questions already, which I’m happy to deal with. The first relates to power supply. So power supply is the most significant operating difficulty we face. But I don’t want people to get it out of proportion. It’s actually a problem that we believe we’ve got our arms around in terms of, first off, we have a full suite of standby diesel gensets. So, we can and do often run the mine completely using diesel. It has a cost implication and an environmental implication, but we can still make excellent money using diesel gensets. So, don’t think that the mine is going to sit there, not producing if the Zimbabwe grid falls over. Having said that, the solar project does make a contribution, but already, we are focusing -- we’re beginning to look at a second phase project to increase the contribution from solar further. That will include some sort of battery storage. And so, it will be more expensive. So broadly speaking, the 12-megawatt facility is costing about $14 million. The cost per megawatt included batteries will be approximately twice that. So, we’re not going to go completely off-grid, but we will hopefully -- or more hopefully, I do expect that we will reduce our average cost of power by increasing the contribution from solar. So, I’m reasonably comfortable that we’ve actually got a solution to solar. Inflation is another big problem in Zimbabwe. But again, I think we’ve dealt with it. The workers towards the end of the year -- what was happening is because the rate of inflation in Zimbabwe is very, very high, what happens is that the RTGS-denominated component of our labor bill increases by 40%, 50% for a six-month period. But because the exchange rate is only devalued by 10% or 15%, once you translate that higher RTGS salary back into local -- into dollars, it gives rise to a very significant, I think it was about a 25% increase in the U.S. dollar salary bill. And that was only for six months. So, to lance the boil, we took the decision late last year to pay all of our workers 100% in U.S. dollars. And so, the question that someone asked was high local inflation is demotivating employees. Well, they’re no longer demotivated. They currently get paid in U.S. dollars. Now they could do what they will with in U.S. dollars. So, they’re very happy, okay? The workforce has grown more quickly than we expected. And that’s because the grade was lower than we expected, and so we’re having to move more tons to achieve the target of 80,000 ounces, and that’s also flowing through in terms of needing additional milling capacity and additional CIL capacity. It is at the margin, okay? It’s not a significant problem. So, I think that deals with inflation.