Colombia Shortens the Restriction Over Aris Mining's Soto Norte

Aris Mining Corporation reported on September 30, 2026 that it has finished preparing the environmental and social impact assessment for its Soto Norte gold project in Santander, Colombia, and will put it in front of the communities of Matanza, Suratá and California in October before filing it with the national environment ministry. The release was headed "Major Developments", and two of the developments in it point in opposite directions.

The first is the one the headline is about. Preparing an impact assessment is a long, expensive piece of work, and finishing it is progress that can be dated. The second sits further down the release: on September 28, 2026, Colombia's Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development issued Resolution 1277, revoking an extension it had granted seven weeks earlier.

A technical mine plan lets Aris design the mine, not build it

Two permissions govern a Colombian mine, and they are often run together in conversation.

The first is the technical mine plan, known locally as the PTO. It is the engineering document that says how the ore will be taken out: the layout, the rate, the sequence. Aris reported that Colombia's National Mining Agency approved a modification to the Soto Norte PTO on July 29, 2026.

The second is the environmental licence, which comes from a different ministry and governs whether the plan may be carried out at all. Aris puts it plainly in the release: construction and mining contemplated by the approved plan "may not commence until the required environmental license has been obtained."

So the July approval is real and the company has it. It is permission to have a design, not permission to move earth.

The restriction between Aris and that licence just got two years shorter

On March 3, 2025, the environment ministry issued Resolution 0221, creating a temporary reserve area over roughly 75,345 hectares of Santander and restricting new mining authorisations and environmental licences inside it, including ground relevant to Soto Norte. Seventy-five thousand hectares is about 753 square kilometres, an area a little larger than the island of Montreal. Half that size would still have covered the project; twice it would have taken in most of the surrounding province.

The reserve area was due to expire on March 4, 2027. On August 4, 2026 the ministry extended it to March 4, 2029. On September 28, 2026 it issued Resolution 1277 and revoked that extension, so the area reverts to its original terms and its original expiry. Aris told shareholders the March 2027 date is "well aligned with our expected project timeline."

For a company that needs a new environmental licence inside that area, a restriction that lapses in seventeen months is better than one that lapses in forty-one. What the release does not say is whether the licence can be issued while the restriction is still running, or only once it has lapsed. That single unanswered question is what the October community meetings, the filing and the licence decision all hang from, and the company has not published an expected date for the licence itself.

What the prefeasibility study says Soto Norte would be

The project's economics come from a prefeasibility study announced on September 3, 2025. The word matters. A prefeasibility study is the second of three levels of engineering study, accurate enough to support reserves but not the final one a board builds from; a feasibility study comes after it, and Aris has not published one for Soto Norte.

On that study, Soto Norte holds proven and probable reserves of 20.3 million tonnes grading 7.00 grams of gold per tonne, or 4.6 million ounces, effective August 18, 2025. Seven grams a tonne is high for an underground gold mine. At half that grade the same plan would have to move twice the rock for the same ounces, and the cost per ounce would roughly double; at twice the grade it would be one of the richest gold mines in the Americas.

The plant is designed for 3,500 tonnes of ore a day, of which 750 tonnes is set aside for local small-scale miners. That is a small mill. Halve it and the mine would struggle to carry its fixed costs; double it and the reserve would be consumed in half the stated 22-year life. Average production works out at about 203,000 ounces of gold a year over years one to twenty-one, and about 263,000 ounces in years two to ten. Initial capital is put at US$625 million. If that number came in twice as high, the study's economics would not survive in their published form; at half, Soto Norte would be funded out of two years of current cash flow.

Marmato is the mine that has to pour gold this quarter

Soto Norte is the project. Marmato is the thing that has to work now. Aris stated in its second-quarter results that it expects first gold from the new Marmato plant in the fourth quarter of 2026, and that about US$118 million of capital in total is required to get there, of which US$78 million went in during the second quarter alone. A slip of one quarter is a timing problem; a slip of a year would move the company's whole production ramp.

Group guidance for 2026 is 300,000 to 350,000 ounces of gold, and the company said in July it remains on track for it. The top of that range is about 17 per cent above the bottom, which is the normal width of a guidance band; a range twice as wide would be a signal that the company did not know its own mines.

Money is not what is holding Soto Norte up

Aris reported cash of US$426 million at June 30, 2026, against gold revenue of US$321 million in the second quarter at an average realised price of US$4,450 an ounce. Halve that cash and the Marmato spend would still be covered; double it and nothing about the Soto Norte timetable would change, because the ministry, not the treasury, sets that pace.

The shares finished October 1, 2026 at C$24.58, up 0.8 per cent on the day, for a market value of about C$5.07 billion per market data read after the close and delayed by 15 minutes. That is secondary market data and is not verified against the company's filings.

The second-quarter release did not break out total debt, so the cash figure above is one side of the balance sheet rather than the whole of it. Free cash flow after growth and expansion capital was negative US$37.8 million in the second quarter, against positive US$41.6 million in the first. The swing is the Marmato build, which is what a company looks like while it is paying for its own growth.

Three claims circulating about Aris are not in this release

Three things have been repeated about this company in the past week that the September 30 release does not support, and they are left out above for that reason.

The first is a figure of 8.9 million ounces for Marmato with management expecting more than ten million. No such figure appears in the September 30 release; the 4.6 million ounces of reserves and 7.0 million ounces of measured and indicated resources quoted above are Soto Norte's, not Marmato's.

The second is a comparison of Soto Norte's economics against Ecuador's Fruta del Norte mine. That comparison is somebody's own reading of two separate studies and has not been published by either company, so it is not repeated here.

The third is a brokerage note said to rate the completed impact assessment "neutral to slightly positive". The note itself was not obtained, and whether that firm's research on Aris is paid for by the issuer is not disclosed in anything available on October 1, 2026.

The calendar is the asset to watch now

Everything Aris announced on September 30 is about sequence. The engineering permission exists. The impact assessment exists. The licence does not, and the ground it covers is under a restriction with a date on it.

A gold company with two producing mines and US$426 million in the bank can wait for a ministry. What it cannot do is build anything in the meantime, and until the licence is in hand, the construction decision Aris has said it will then be in a position to make is a sentence rather than a schedule.

Transparency note. This is an independent due-diligence analysis and editorial opinion piece produced by The Maple Markets editorial desk. It is not sponsored, promoted or commissioned, and no compensation of any kind has been received from Aris Mining Corporation (TSX: ARIS) or any party acting on their behalf. The analysis is based on public disclosure available as of the publish date; every figure is attributed to its primary source. The Maple Markets and its authors may hold positions in securities mentioned; nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security, and readers should not treat it as investment advice. Past disclosure does not guarantee future results. Policies: Editorial Standards · Financial Disclaimer.