Aya Gold and Silver Built the Mill It Promised, and That Is Why Its Second Project Gets a Hearing

The mill at the Zgounder silver mine in Morocco processed ore at 3,889 tonnes a day in the second quarter of 2026, the company reported on August 13, 2026. Eighteen months earlier, in the quarter Aya Gold and Silver declared commercial production at the same plant, it ran at 1,236 tonnes a day.

Those two numbers, more than any headline, tell you what kind of company this is — and they are why a study Aya published on September 9, 2026 about a completely different project was taken seriously rather than filed away as wishful arithmetic. A mining company earns the right to talk about its second asset by finishing the first one, and Aya has done that. The evidence for it is specific, and so is the point where it stops.

The first test was pouring silver, not describing it

Aya has one producing mine. Zgounder sits in the Anti-Atlas, it has been mined on and off for decades, and the company spent the early 2020s building a new processing plant to replace a small operation with a larger one. Commissioning began in mid-2024, the first silver pour from the expanded plant came that July, and commercial production was declared in the fourth quarter of 2024, according to the company's March 28, 2025 results release.

The cost of that build was carried in the results. For the full year 2024 Aya produced 1,646,265 ounces of silver, reported revenue of US$39.1 million, and posted a net loss of US$26.0 million at a cash cost of US$21.71 per ounce. It held US$49.2 million in cash and restricted cash at December 31, 2024. Benoit La Salle, President and Chief Executive Officer, described 2024 in that release as "a pivotal year for Aya, highlighted by the successful on budget completion of the Zgounder Mine expansion."

On budget is a specific and checkable claim, and it is the first thing a mining company can be measured on that does not depend on geology. Plenty of juniors raise money to build a plant and then raise more money to finish it. Aya did not.

The year it fell short of its own guidance

Then came the harder part, and Aya did not clear it on the first attempt. In the same March 2025 release the company guided 2025 production to 5.0 to 5.3 million ounces of silver, at a cash cost of US$15.00 to US$17.50 per ounce, with mill recovery of 84 to 88 per cent and processed grade of 170 to 200 grams per tonne.

Actual 2025 production came in at 4.83 million ounces, below the bottom of that range, as The Maple Markets reported on September 10, 2026 in A US$3.5 Billion NPV Before a Feasibility Study. A ramp-up that runs a year behind its own guidance is a real shortfall and it belongs in any honest account of this company. It is also the ordinary shape of a first year at a new plant, where throughput, recovery and grade all have to arrive at once.

An outside attack, answered with reconciliation

In September 2025, with the ramp-up still incomplete, a short seller who disclosed a financial interest in a falling share price published allegations about Aya's management, operations and resource base. The company responded on September 25, 2025 with a release that did something more useful than denial. It pointed to reconciliation.

Aya said it had produced more than 10 million ounces of silver since 2020, with mined ounces consistently reconciling against its published resource estimate. Reconciliation is the plainest test in mining: you estimate what is in the ground, you mine it, and you compare what came out with what the model said would. A model that reconciles over five years and 10 million ounces has been checked by the mine itself.

The release also set out the drilling behind the estimate, from 76,000 metres as at March 2021 to 121,500 metres by December 2021 and a further 231,000 metres to June 2025, noted that the estimates were prepared by P&E Mining Consultants Inc. under NI 43-101, and said the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development's technical adviser had confirmed them. Cash stood at US$115 million.

Companies under attack usually reach for adjectives. This one reached for a five-year production history and the name of the consultant who signed the estimate, which is the answer an investor can actually verify.

The mill is now running ahead of the plan it was given

By the middle of 2026 the operating numbers had stopped needing context. In the second quarter Aya produced 1,489,526 ounces of silver at Zgounder and 1.68 million silver-equivalent ounces on a consolidated basis, processing at 3,889 tonnes a day with mill recovery of 91.2 per cent and a processed head grade of 141 grams per tonne. Cash cost was US$17.69 per ounce of silver sold. Revenue was US$96.8 million and net income US$35.0 million, with US$48 million of operating cash flow, per the August 13, 2026 results release.

Set those against the plan. The company's January 27, 2026 outlook targeted a sustained rate of about 3,650 tonnes a day at Zgounder and a cash cost near US$21.50 per ounce, with total 2026 output of 6.2 to 6.8 million silver-equivalent ounces including roughly 1.0 million from a pyrite stockpile at Boumadine. The mill is running above the throughput target, recovery is above the 84 to 88 per cent band set for 2025, and the cash cost is running well under the 2026 guidance figure. Maple's September 10 piece quoted the Zgounder-only guidance of 5.2 to 5.8 million ounces of silver; the 6.2 to 6.8 million figure is the consolidated silver-equivalent number from the same outlook, and both come from the January 27, 2026 release.

Sources: Aya's March 28, 2025 and August 13, 2026 results releases, and its January 27, 2026 outlook. The 2025 production figure is as reported by The Maple Markets on September 10, 2026; the 2025 cash cost is the guidance range, not the outcome.

The balance sheet moved with the mill. Cash and equivalents were US$182.8 million at June 30, 2026, with US$16 million restricted and working capital of US$144.8 million, while non-current financial liabilities fell to US$57.1 million from US$84.0 million a year earlier. Two years after the final drawdown on its Zgounder expansion loan, reported in June 2024, the company is funding growth out of a producing mine. It joined the S&P/TSX Composite Index in June 2024, listed on Nasdaq in May 2026 and entered the VanEck Gold Miners ETF on June 16, 2026, each of which widens who can own it without saying anything about the rock.

Boumadine is a very good study and it is still a study

Which brings the argument to the thing that did not happen this month. Aya's updated preliminary economic assessment for Boumadine, announced September 9, 2026, put the after-tax net present value at US$3.5 billion at a 5 per cent discount rate, against US$1.475 billion in the prior assessment, with a 93 per cent after-tax internal rate of return, a 0.7-year payback, initial capital of US$463 million and a 14-year mine life.

Three constraints sit around those figures, and the company disclosed all three. The prices assumed are US$3,500 per ounce of gold and US$50 per ounce of silver, up from US$2,800 and US$30 in the prior study. The resource is 5,370 thousand ounces of gold equivalent with an effective date of February 28, 2026, of which 4,260 thousand ounces, or 79 per cent, sit in the inferred category, the class that cannot be converted into a reserve without more drilling.

Boumadine has no mineral reserves at all. A preliminary economic assessment is the earliest of the three study levels Canadian rules recognise, and it is permitted to include inferred material precisely because it is preliminary. The feasibility study that would test all of this began in March 2026 and is not finished.

None of that makes the number soft dishonestly. It makes it a study, which is what the company called it. The distance between a US$3.5 billion assessment and a mine is measured in drilling, permits, metallurgy and capital, and Aya has been across that distance once already, which is the only reason its version of the claim carries more weight than the same claim from a company that has never built anything.

What the record buys, and what it does not

The pattern here is portable to any single-asset producer. A company that says it will build a plant and builds it on budget has converted one promise. A company whose mined ounces reconcile with its resource model over five years has converted a second. A company running above its throughput plan with a cash cost under guidance has converted a third. Those three conversions are why a fourth claim gets read carefully rather than discounted on arrival.

They do not transfer to the geology of a different deposit 300 kilometres away. Boumadine has to be drilled, engineered and permitted on its own evidence, and the 79 per cent inferred share of its resource is the exact measure of how much of it is still inference. Aya's leadership is unchanged at the top through all of it: Benoit La Salle remains President, Chief Executive Officer and Director, with Raphaël Beaudoin as Executive Vice-President, Operations and David Lalonde as Executive Vice-President, Exploration, per the company's leadership page read on September 13, 2026. Both men held vice-president titles in the March 2025 release and have since been elevated.

In 2024 Aya had a new plant and a net loss. In 2026 it has a mill running above its own throughput target, US$182.8 million of cash and a study it did not have to finance with equity. The feasibility work at Boumadine began in March 2026, and until that document exists the strongest evidence in the company's favour is still the mine in the Anti-Atlas that pours silver every month without a press release being needed to explain it.

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 Aya Gold & Silver Inc. (TSX: AYA), 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.