Aya Gold & Silver Inc.

Hello, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to AYA Gold and Silver's third quarter 2024 results conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask the question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. I would now like to hand the conference over to Ruth Hanna. You may begin.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to AYA's third quarter 2024 results earnings call. Today on the call, we have Benoit Lassalle, President and CEO, Hugo Landré-Tolzuc, CFO, Raphael Boudoin, Vice President Operations, and David Lalande, Vice President Exploration, all calling in from Marrakesh. We will finish today's event with a Q&A session with the team. As always, please contact our IR team directly with any follow-up questions that are not addressed during the call. Before we begin, I would like to remind listeners that today's event will contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Details of the forward-looking statements are contained in our November 14th news release as well as on CDOT Plus and on www.ayagoldsilver.com. With that, I would like to turn the conference over to AYA's President and CEO, Benoit La Salle. Benoit, please go ahead.

Thank you, Ruth. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for being with us this morning. Q3 2024 is a transitional quarter, but with key strategic accomplishments. We continue advancing the Zugunder mine, and it is on budget. And as we had indicated, we were a couple of weeks late from the original plan, but we've made up some of that time, and we are commissioning on a going basis. We're targeting commercial production in late Q4 2024. And for that, we have a stockpile as of the end of this quarter of 347,000 ton of ore, which is ready for commissioning of the new plant. The expansion is 99 point something completed. You saw the video last week. You saw the press release. So we're almost there and we will be seeing more development in the very, very short term. It is a transitional quarter on production. We've produced 355,927 ounces. And the reason we're below our budget and below expectation is we were developing new stoves, but those were not ready for this quarter. They are ready for the Q4 quarter. So the delay in reaching the new stoves and the fact that we have a very disciplined mining method now, we stayed in stoves that had lower grade and less tonnage, hence the reason for a lower production. We already see this being corrected in the month of October. We generated in the quarter 11 million of revenue at an average realized selling price of $27 per ounce, which is very good considering the general market of the past few months. The net loss for the period is not significant. It's $300,000. And the adjusted cash cost is $19.93. As you can see, we're also reporting a total cash cost of $23.47. However, you know, we have to tell you that this cash cost includes non-recurring expenses. The development of the six stoves that are now ready were not capitalized and were passed through as an expense in Q3. hence increasing the cash cost by almost $3.50. So this is non-recurring expenses. It was a contract given outside to a contractor to develop the six stoves. And obviously, when you use a contractor, it's a lot more expensive than our own team. But we wanted to do this because we are getting ready for the plant to be up and running by Q4 2024. And as you know, by that time, we will be mining underground 1,600 tons per day. So when we talk about commissioning, very often people think of commissioning of a plant. But there's also ramp-up and commissioning of the underground mine where you have a lot of equipment, a lot of new people. And, you know, let's recall that it used to be a 700-ton-a-day mine, and now it will be a 2,700-ton-a-day mine. So there is ramp-up at the plant, but there's also ramp-up at the mine, mainly the underground mine. The open pit is going very smoothly. We are mining 500 ton a day, and we will be going to 1,000 ton a day. So just for you to understand the cost, in Q3, we processed 42,000 ton, and the underground cost of mining was $85, which included the development of the six stoves. Our stockpile has a cost of $35 of mining. So you can see that it is really a very unusual quarter with non-recurring expenses. As I indicated, we already see big changes coming through in Q4. Due to the fact that we were a couple of weeks late and the fact that the commissioning is now starting more in Q4 and then in Q3, we will revise the guidance for this year to 1.6 up to 1.8 million ounces for the year 2024. As well in the quarter, we've done a spin-out. So we have created the spin-out to better value our gold assets. So we signed a term sheet with MX2, a brand-new company for the MSMEs and the Tijerit asset. So the spin-out has been a very good success. They started the new team with a financing of 7.5 million, and they ended with a financing of 15 million. So it has been a very good success, and it's all being put together as we speak. On the exploration program, as you know, AYA is a very, very interesting exploration story. So we've confirmed high-grade mineralization at depth and on lateral extension at Zgounder, and we'll review some of those drill results. We grew Boumadzine main trend from, you know, up to 5.4 kilometer. You recall last year we were at 4.2 kilometer. And we've also shown potential for new mineralization style in one of the drill hole where we obtained close to 2% copper and 2,000 gram per ton silver. We are also in the quarter, you know, we are preparing ourselves for new drilling, which has started now in Q4, and to the west. We have new anomalies to the east and to the south. We're currently drilling the new anomalies to the west. So quickly, a very Quick review of the spinout. MX2 is a private company for the time being. It's North Africa and West Africa because it has an asset in Mauritania. AMISMIS is a mining permit in Morocco. It has a resource that's not 43-101 that goes back many years of over 300,000 ounces at 13 gram per ton. And right now underway, there's a 2,400-meter drill program to look at the extension and to start the understanding of the geology. The new team in MX2 is on site as we speak with our team, the AYA team, and the drill program is underway. There's also the Tijerit asset, which you know we've done a feasibility study on. It has a resource of a little bit above 500,000 ounces. It's between 2 gram per ton and 1.6 gram per ton, depending on the deposit. MX-2 have an option. to buy this from AYA over the next three years. They will be looking at fast-tracking this into development or more drilling and development and construction hopefully in the very near future. Our positioning in MX2 after the financing will be 42% ownership for AYA. The company will have $15 million in cash. And AYA will have two board members sitting in a board of about seven individuals. So going to slide number five on the presentation, again, this is just a quick summary of where we are at the end of Q3. So you see the silver production is a little bit lower than what we wanted, but again, due to stoves not being ready. Because the other thing as well, as I say, we are very disciplined, is historically they would open stoves, never close them, and go to the next one and then maybe come back later. We don't do that anymore. We finish the stoves. We backfill them. We have a cement backfill plant. So we backfill them so that we can come and take, you know, the stoves that are between two stoves that are mineralized. So we have a very disciplined approach. And hence, sometimes it forces us to continue into some stoves where we have lower grade material. But globally, for the company as a whole and for the project, it's the way to go to be disciplined, to, you know, take all the ore that's available, do the cement backfill, and then move to the next phase. So you have on page five, you have the production compared to the rest of the year. You have the grade. Again, due to the fact that we stayed in some older stoves, we were getting an average grade of about 161 gram per ton, which is absolutely, you know, too low for this deposit, but the reality is we don't want to leave it there and not take it. So, currently in October, we're already back to 190, and we expect this to continue to go back up. Veal recovery is always between 82 and 85. Again, continuing smoothly. But the real important chart here is the quarterly ton process. We are at 83,000, which is a 19% increase year over year. And the two plants that we have function extremely well, and they are older, but they will keep running even once we have the third plant up and running. The on page six, you have a few financial Tableau, in French, charts, a few financial charts. You have your cash flow from operating activity, which is negative six million this quarter due to the fact that we've invested heavily into the development of the six stoves. You have the gross profit, which is, again, a little bit lower due to the fact that the grade was lower, and profit and cost of goods sold go hand in hand. And with a little bit less production for the quarter and a little bit lower grade, you have a higher cash cost, which we saw at $23, which we have on the next slide. Therefore, with that, you have a quarter where at the end, when you look at the financial statement, we are breakeven, which I find not that bad in a transition quarter where we are ramping up the plant, ramping up the mine. And we did hit this week 1,600 tons per day from the underground mine. So, we are there. We are where we want to be for this project to really get going. So, you have on the construction front, you have that on slide number eight, the Zgounder expansion, plus you saw the video last week, which is telling. but we are 99% done at the processing plant. The underground and the open pit are both operating very well. Tailings, water management, very good news on water management. We are at the beginning of the rain season and all of our water reservoirs are full. That is, again, very unique. It's the time of the year. We've had very good rainfall. And our water management system and the way we capture the water is working extremely well. So I'm pleased to say that on the waterfront, we're doing extremely well. Electricity infrastructure, well, that's built. You saw some of the pictures. We have green energy coming to site. We have, as you know, 20-year PPA. It's operating extremely well, and we're pleased with that. On the secondaire expansion, you saw that we started the commissioning. You saw the ball mill. The lubrication system that created a few weeks delay is now all back and operational. The issue that we had, it's all been fixed. We've done all the tests. The oil is pure. The ball mill can turn. And you saw the conveyor. So it's all working very well. We've also completed our lab. So we have our, you know, a very big lab at Gundaes where we can do all of our samples and our preparation. So that's also been completed. Taking you to the exploration aspect of our business, as you know, we are one of the largest drill program in Africa. We are drilling this year 160,000 meters. And we have, you know, some three main zones, the Zgounder mine, the Boumedzin project, and the Zgounder regional. So at Zgounder, the mine, At the end of Q3, we had 25,000 meters done on a program of 30,000 meters. As I always tell David, David, if you need more drilling because you keep finding and you keep finding extension, just come back to us. And, you know, has no limitation on the drilling that we want to do there because it's at site. It's truckable. It's something that's extremely important. has 69, almost 70,000 meters done of the 120,000 meter program. We should get to the end of the year to close to 120. We are now running at 11 rigs and one RC, and we will probably bring a second RC for the deeper holes so that we don't go core all the way. It will be less expensive and faster. But we are running 11 rigs right now. So the first 60,000 meters was done on the expansion, on the main zone, and it expanded the main zone to 5.4 kilometer strike. The other 60,000 meters are being done on targets. And as I indicated at the beginning, we are currently drilling the west target, which is a very strong geophysical anomaly. At Gundea Regional, we're almost done. We had 10,000 meters in the program. We are at the end of the quarter at 9,800. We are finding mineralization. We need to find a pocket where it's accumulated, and we can mine it. The area, as you know, is very large. We've done all the geological work, spectral imaging, satellite, geochem. We've done stream sediment, and we're looking at many targets, and we are doing, you know, we are drilling all the targets that we see. And at the same time, we have the Tirzit asset that we bought last year. So we've completed the geophysics program because Tirzit has also a copper component to the gold and silver. And we are analyzing that as we speak. which used to be part of us directly, now it's part of us indirectly through MX2. Well, this year we did mapping and we did a bit of geology, but drilling, as I indicated to you, has started being managed by the MX2 team and by ARTI. On page 11 of the presentation, we keep hitting some beautiful mineralization zones. To date, you know, we've drilled 8,000 meters in Q3 of a 30,000-meter program. Look at some of the results again, 1,000 gram per ton over 13 meters, 322 over 17, 2,800 over 8 meters. So, it is, as we expected, a very nice loaf of bread, 1.4 kilometer long, 20 meters thick. all the way down to the granite, which is between 600 and 700 meters. When we get down to the granite, as we had expected, there's kind of an enrichment of silver at the bottom, and we're seeing that. So, this is ongoing. It's a 30,000-meter program. We did 8,000 this quarter, and as I indicated, this is, you know, we will drill this as we keep finding extension at depth and to the east as well. On page 12, you have the original geophysics of Boumadine. So Boumadine is our main exploration asset because it's got so much potential. And last year, with 94,000 meters of drilling, it gave us globally in all categories over 300 million ounces of silver equivalent at very good grade or 4.1 million ounces of gold equivalent at five gram per ton. So it's a beautiful project. As indicated, we've drilled in the quarter 27,000 meters. So you can see it's very, very busy. We've drilled so far 69,000 meters. You see results continuously and you're going to keep seeing more as we have 11 drills turning and this is continuing. Throughout the year, we've added 18 new permits, which is because we're seeing the structures at surface, because we did the geophysics for the whole region. We did 13,000 line kilometers of mobile empty geophysics, but we've done the complete district, and we have many, many geophysics anomalies. and that those are being looked at we do the geochem we walk the ground we do some sampling and when we're ready we will we drill them so currently we are as i indicated to you we are drilling the west which is an important system so on page 13 just a few results of the quarter uh coming from bumadin a thousand gram over 13.5 meters, 322 grams over 17.6. So, you can see we have, you know, continuous results on this 5.4 kilometer slab, which we do see over 6 kilometer in geophysics. It's continuous. It's there. We have drilled 60,000 meters into it, and we will do a resource update for Q1 of next year. But the highlight is on page 14. It's the high-conductivity anomaly. So what you see at the top, on top of the two potatoes or cherries, is the surface. You can see the drill results on page 14. We've drilled Bumazin, which is the one on the right-hand side. You see on the left-hand side is a similar anomaly. And the top is mineralized, so we know the top of Boumediene is mineralized because we already have discovered 352 million ounces of silver equivalent. But what's very interesting right now, and you see it on the bottom picture, is we are drilling that long hole that is going right into the eye of the anomaly. So as of now, we are just touching the green. So we're about 900 meters into that drill hole, and we're just beginning to enter what we hope to see, the mineralized zone, which has the same signature as what we have at surface. But you know, this is geophysical, so is it exactly there? It's the beginning of a program. Now, why we're drilling this, because we want to understand if this is a pore-free system, if this is mineralization at depth, because if you look at the surface and how small it looks from where we are now, and we know that this is 5.4 kilometer long and more than 350, because 352 million ounces was on strike of 4.2 kilometer, and now we're 5.4, and look at the system underneath. So, this We will be entering the zone, I would say, in about a week to 10 days. Of course, and, you know, we are watching, and the GOs are giving us feedback of what kind of rock they're seeing and where we are going. So this is Boumadzine. You've got the lateral extension to the west, to the east, to the south. It's still open to the north, and you have this ad-depth structure that looks very, very interesting. On the ESG side, to complete this presentation on page 15, look, we are very, very serious about health and safety. We only had three lost time injuries in the quarter, and they were not very, very grave. It was just some small injuries. We've, you know, given 5,000 hours of training in the quarter, which is a 90% increase year over year. And we take this seriously. If you are with us on LinkedIn, you do see a lot of pictures of some of our employees who put up pictures of the training, which is health and safety. It can be education. It can be emergency. All of that you can see. I'm also very pleased to say that we received the ISO 9001 certification. It was a team effort at the mine site. So from geology all the way to health and safety production, we've received the ISO 9001 certification. We've also submitted all of our data for the carbon disclosure project. You know that our ESG loan with the EBRD is an ESG-driven facility. We have received all of the money in 2024 because we've met all of our ESG requirements. So that is something that we take very, very seriously. With the communities, it's also going very well. I'm pleased to say that our program in first school showed 68% increase year over year in the percentage of students opting for science projects or science streams. So this is really very, very interesting, and we are now taking our program to second middle school. So primary school, high school, and in Morocco, they call this first school and second school, middle school. But we are very much involved with education, online education, health and safety health for the communities. We are now starting a mobile clinic, pediatrics. You remember last year, we added for the eyes, we had diabetes. We've had many, many clinics. and livelihood with the saffron project, with agriculture. We have water pumps, and we are really very much involved. We've added some signal at the saffron and vegetable farms, which is just for health and safety. So globally, it's been a very, very good quarter for some of the milestones. It's been a little bit low on the production, and we agree, but we're building the future. We're not just trying to maximize one quarter, and if we have to, and we don't want to compromise the mine, so when we need to stay in one phase and finish it so that we can, you know, backfill it with cement, we do it, and knowing that it's just better times ahead. So, the takeaway is, again, as you imagine, 120,000 meters of drilling, ongoing interpretation, major, major exploration program on the west and at depth, which is very interesting, while the major strike, the main strike, continues to expand. At Gounder, 40,000 meters of drilling. You recall 10,000 regional, 30,000 at the mine, ongoing, and again, on track. Probably we will exceed the 40,000 meters. And the Gounder silver mine expansion, well, as indicated, it is on track. It is on budget, a budget that was prepared in 2022 that saw some inflation in transport. And today, we are within 1%, not even less than 1% on budget. We reviewed that this week, and we can still say today we are on budget. We cannot say we're on time because we had that short delay with the plumbing of the lubrification system. But within three to four weeks, we're close to on time, but we are on budget. So thank you very much for your time, and I will turn it over to the operator for the question period.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder to ask a question, please press star 11 on your phone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster.

Our first question comes from the line of Panik Singh with 8 Capital.

Your line is open.

Thanks, guys. Hi, Ben Wong team. Just have to get a little nitty-gritty this quarter on the modeling. Could you expand on some of those underground issues you were having on those stokes and the rework you have to do? Just trying to understand the grand scheme of things here. Those four stokes being rehabbed, are they different from the six Stokes in development right now. What's the thinking there? Thanks, Pramit.

We are all together here in Morocco. We just came back from the mine. So we could not be better prepared to answer your question. The whole team is with me and we have reviewed obviously with the board the past three days the operation of Q3. And I will pass it over to Rafael who is, as you know, our VP operation and is in charge of the team, in charge of the construction and of the operation. And I would ask Rafael to give you his view and a bit of feedback on what we saw and on the plan going forward.

Good morning, guys. Yeah, so this quarter, I wouldn't say we have issues. We are ramping up the mine. That's just how we learn more on geology and we refine our geological process. That's okay. I would say that the lower grade in Q3 came from our active drive and our development. We are developing new stoves. And as we do the drives, we get ore. And as we do the first ore drive through the body, those tend to be the lowest grade of the stove. And as we go on higher cuts, on higher raises on the stove, we get the higher grade of the stove. We also have three stoves at sea that we did the ore access, we did the ore drive, we got the primary there, and we are ramping up our cement plant to backfill then. So we have three stoves that are waiting, just as we do the commissioning of the cement plant. We are integrating the cemented rock fill in our mining sequence, and we need to do that correctly. So it's going good, and as we commission the cement plant, we'll be able to backfill those planteries, mine the secondary, and go to the upper crust. Q3 is very important, and so is Q4. We need to get ready for Q1. Services are ready. We've been doing a lot of stone development in the east where we have good grades, but we need to mine it properly. And that is mostly on cement backfill. And as we fully integrate our cement fill into operation, we'll be able to continue mining the first trench into the rainwater.

Okay, got it. Okay, so that sounds good. Seems like you're working through it in Q4, hopefully better starting next year. I guess my second question was, OpenPIT seems like it's doing better for now, right? And could you maybe look at sequencing in more OpenPIT ore to get better grades in the coming quarters, or are you just going to go as is?

Yeah, I think about the OpenPIT, Indeed, the open pit is going very well and we are ramping it up and we even found some extension a bit north that wasn't originally in the pit shell. The entire team is quite excited about that and the open pit was always there for two reasons. Well, the first one is obviously to recover all the top ore that cannot be taken on the ground, that's obvious, but also to make sure we have the flexibility we need to do this mill and this mine ramp up. So with the small expansion north and south, we're still working on it. Absolutely. We are above 500 per day in the open fit now. We're targeting 1,000 before year end. We even reach 1,000 depending on the strip of a particular month. And we started a second shift on the open fit and it's going quite well. I mean, in October, in the open fit, we had above 200 gram per ton. The strip is as expected. So, yeah, we will sequence it to get as much as we can from it, especially to give us more flexibility. It will also help to drive costs down, especially in Q4 and Q1, where we are continuing the commissioning and map up of the mill.

Okay. Got it. It sounds all good. I guess my final question is just on that anomaly, Benoit. Wendy, do you think you expect some results before year end on that or it's probably Q1?

You mean on the big potato underneath the boom engine trend? Is that what you're referring to?

Yeah, five kilometers, yeah, to the west, yeah.

I do call five times a day and we're following the drilling. We're all following the drilling. We are now, as of morning that they told us we were at 1,000 meters, so we're entering the zone. The rock sequence that we wanted to see is there, and we are a couple of days away, maybe 10 days, 15 days away. Obviously, this is going to be top priority at the lab, because the turnaround time at the lab, when you do 160,000 meters of drilling, we represent 80% of the capacity of the country. But that will have top priority, that it is there, the team is there. As you understand it, it's like a new theory that we're testing due to this massive geophysical anomaly. So yes, we hope to have results before year end. You understand it's not one drill hole that's going to make it or break it, but the anomaly is strong. And also when you look at the map, the same anomaly or the same strength is also to the west. So when you look at the west, and we walk the west, you have the surface anomaly, but you also have the anomaly at depth, which is identical, but even bigger than the one under the main trench. So yes, it is a priority. The drilling to the west is also a priority, because that's that surface. And again, the geochem, when we walk the ground, it showed us a similar type of rock. So, yeah, we're very pleased with the 1,000-meter done so far, and we are expecting results.

Okay, great. So, look forward to those. Thanks, guys.

Thank you. Thank you.

Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Kevin O'Halloran with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Hey, Ben Valentin. Thanks for taking my question. I'm just wondering if you can give us a bit more color on the backfill issues that you mentioned in the press release, and are these resolved now?

So, absolutely. Thank you for asking, and again, I'm going to pass it over to Rafael, and just to give you a bit of explanation on where we are and the reason for the commissioning took a little bit more time than you think.

Yeah, so we started commissioning. It went well. And I mean, this is literally a small seal on the cement stand that was leaking. So we fixed that. We changed a couple elbows in the piping that got a bit clogged up as we're doing the testing, and we failed the first coat. We're getting the parts in FedEx, and we're starting back up. So I mean, as far as commissioning, you commission, things work. We need to change a few parts, and be back in business.

Great. Thanks for that. And then you mentioned the grades are coming up. Just wondering if you can give a little bit more granularity in terms of what the grade profile we should expect over the next few quarters as you ramp up?

Well, we're not yet giving guidance for next year, but Rafael, maybe you want to comment on what we're seeing right now?

Yeah, I mean, we mentioned this in the MDMA. In October, in the open pit, we had above 200 gram per ton, so 209, which is in line with what we expected, and which is also in line with our mine plan. We had some large benches that might have a bit more dilution than a small one, depending on we're quite happy with the grade. As for the underground, we do see a pretty good increase in October, too. And again, guys, it's always the stoke drive and the first morning line before we do the raises, those are always a bit lower grade. And it's normal as we give a lot more stoves, initially it brings it all over. So to answer your question, it would be what we've been historically mining. We have folks right now above 200 and we'll continue to have some.

Okay, great. Appreciate that. That's all for me, guys. Thanks a lot. Thanks, Kevin.

Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, that's star 11 to ask a question.

Our next question comes from the line of .

Eleanor with SCP Resource Finance. Your line is open.

Wonderful. Hi, Benoit and team. I just have a couple questions, a little bit in the details on some of the operational bits here today. Some of them were already sort of covered, but the first question has to do with the rehabilitation. You had mentioned it before, but I kind of missed maybe one part of the response. Is this kind of rehabbing the browse and access points to long-hold stoves of the four that are kind of undergoing rehab? Or does any of it have to do with kind of fine-tuning blasting and timing to prevent hang-ups and things like that?

Thanks again. This is Reggie for FIL.

So at Gunder, we have lots of hybrid stoves closer to historical stoves. And when we get closer to them, we need to get the design right to make sure to mine the entire wall. And we have to be careful for historical badness. So when we get to the stove, we always reassess our design. And we need to make sure to have the proper filler to improve recovery and make sure we keep it safe. So this is why sometimes when we do the first hard dryer in a stove, we always evaluate if we have backfill inside from a hysterical stove, especially where these three stoves in particular are placed. So it's just a matter of taking the time to assess the wall thickness before we can take the other stuff. And if we're a bit too small, sometimes we need to push the access a bit east or a bit west to make sure to leave us better.

Okay, that's really helpful. And so of all the SOAPs that you have currently developed or are in development and are being rehabbed, are these all long-haul kind of access or planned to be long-haul SOAPs? Is there any cut and fill being planned for these initial SOAPs by chance?

So currently at Glunder, we don't do long-haul sloping. We have a trial next year. And I always say the same thing about long-haul. Long-haul is something we want to do at Glunder. It will bring the cost down, but it's not something that we need. So currently, our entire production is only in cotton sales. And it sure would be nice to introduce long-haul next year. And we're actively working on that as part of our long-term plan. but we don't need it, and when we do it, we'll make sure it's a success.

Okay, great. So then of these current scopes that you have, because there's going to be about 19 once the ones that are rehabbed are kind of up and running, what kind of mucking rates are you kind of anticipating from these areas in general? I'm just trying to get an idea of how many scopes you sort of need open to achieve the projected like steady state production, basically?

Well, we're on track for a stockpile that we have, so it's the first thing to mention. And we're also on track for the mining rate of the open pit, which has further flexibility to increase. So we're not too concerned about the underground mining rate. We need to improve what we have in Q3, don't get me wrong. And that's where I'm going in October and November. Now if you ask me, the final mining rate or what we're looking for for the underground mining rate is something between 1500 and 2000 tons per day that we need to reach in underground, which we'll get to in 2025 and depending on the sequence with the open pit. So we will remain flexible with those open pits as we learn more about the opportunities we have there. And we will take the reminder on the ground. We can make sure both open fit and on the ground, we have the funds that we need.

Okay. And I guess also one other question on the backfill. So it mentioned there's a backfill station that's currently underway. Is that, like, are all the boreholes drilled and inserts in place and kind of trunk lines and piping there? Is this just part of the commissioning that you were just sort of talking about? moving through, or is this a new backfill station for a different area that you haven't quite accessed yet? Just try to get some more color on that statement from the MD&A. Okay.

Yeah, maybe I wasn't clear enough on that. I mean, the backfill plant is all installed. We have service holes. And at this point, we're cementing every level, and we have mixing base to make the cement where the waste drops. So everything is installed. I mean, we're talking about commissioning. We're aggressive at AYA. We thought we'd do it in two days, and it turns out it takes like 200 more times in two days, not like a month and a half, as we need to change a couple parts. And it's all installed. We just need to get it backed up, and this is happening on the street.

Okay, great. So it's just the main backfill station. I wasn't sure, like sometimes, like if you have little substations underground, people might call them stations. So I didn't know if that was something separate that you were referring to, but that makes a lot of sense. That's really helpful. And then I guess my last question, sorry for having to lie on all of these details, but for ventilation, so for the last 19-25 raise to the upper levels, So that's planned to be commissioned by the end of this year with kind of stoping planned basically right afterwards. So that event race will kind of open up the upper levels to a bit more of a higher grade and things are as well. I just wanted to kind of confirm that that's still kind of the case. Does anything else hold up? Not hold up, but is there a sequencing bit on like on stoping that's required ahead of accessing those upper levels? Or once the event race is in place, can you start move your access drives and begin kind of stoping kind of right afterwards, basically.

Okay, so some ventilation, most of that work was done in 2023 and early 2024. We have two ventilation rays, one that goes from surface to main level 2000, and another one that goes all the way down to 1925, exhausting straight on surface. So both our main vent rays are done, and we also have all of our secondary vent system installed, all the way down to 1925. As we go down to 1900, we'll need to have the inter-level array, which is done very quickly, and we also have the secondary ventilation. So we never have any issues with ventilation, because we are on a mountain, and most upper levels, they go directly outside. But for level sub 2000, we've completed the secondary shaft all the way to 1925. And we can use secondary ventilation 1900 until we get the other way. And all the engineering is done for the ramp moving down. So all of engineering for sub-level 1925 is complete all the way down to Granite with electrical, pumping, vent, service. So that's actually going very well. There's no more problems. not an issue. It's not something that we worked out a long time ago. That's okay.

Okay, great. And then, yeah, I guess the last question, I think I saw it in the press list, but I just wanted to double check, but what's the current processing rate from the new plant? I think things have been going really well there since the gall mill kind of adjustments and kind of recommissioning that whole spot. But just, yeah, I just wanted to check what the current processing rate is.

Well, thanks for asking, Eleanor. I mean, we're all excited for mill ramp up and nobody's asking. So I was looking forward to talking about that a bit. So, yeah, let's talk about it. I mean, crushing plant is fully operational. That's been on point for a while. We have an excellent milling rate. We're still in commission. I'm just talking about the milling rate here. The rest of the circuit, we still need to go through. I mean, we've reached 100 tons per hour. The availability is improving every day. I mean, on the milling rate, we're above main plate even. So we've been leaching for about a week now. A couple weeks ago, we commissioned the Merrell Pro, and we've been producing our first overtakes for a few days now. We hosted the boredom site last week. The mill was running and we did silver pour. We're very excited with how the commissioning is going and with the commissioning team. I mean, the entire team is working day and night to get this going and we're very excited that we started producing silver cake. And there's no real bottleneck. I mean, it's just small tweaking and and Q&A and programming every day, and we're very excited. So we started producing silver cake, and it was a fun week for all of us.

That's really great to hear. Yeah, I'm glad I asked that question. No, because it was such a quick turnaround from, I guess, the initial announcement of, you know, having to make some changes edits, let's call it, to the entire mail circuit. And, yeah, that's really great to hear. It sounds like things are going quite well there. So, yeah, that was all my questions for today. But thanks so much again for the time and for answering all my questions. And all the best. Look forward to talking to you guys next quarter.

Thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm showing no further questions in the queue. I would now like to turn the call back to Benoit for closing remarks.

Thank you. Thank you very much for attending. Thank you for the questions. Thank you, Elena, for asking how the new plant is coming, because at the end of the day, that is so important. And it is. We have done this bill on time, except for, as I mentioned at the beginning, except for this little problem with the lubrication system. We did it on budget. all at all globally to build this kind of a plant in Morocco is exceptional. The cost is below anywhere you would see it around the world. And the plant is extremely robust. We have seen it, we were there this week and it is extremely robust. And I believe that the wrap up is ongoing and it will be very interesting to see the power that was presented by Rafael is we have flexibility. We have three sources of oil. We have the open pit, which is also giving us very positive surprises. We were very careful at building a stockpile. We originally planned for 200,000 tons. At the end of the quarter, we were at 357,000 tons. So we have half a year or a hundred and some days of ore ready to go, that's already been mined. That is an inventory. Then we have the underground mine, which yes, it needs to ramp up like a plant, but it is being done. It is getting an increasing capacity. I did mention that we did hit one day in this quarter in June 4, of 1,600 tons per day. That's not where we are today, but we did it. The teams have been built. We now have 1,300 employees on site. The teams are going to grow still a little bit. We discussed that this morning. We're going to grow the teams, especially for the underground line. Flexibility in mining is key. The open fit is better than expected. Some of you in society were saying it's an open pit. It's not an open pit. We're eating up the mountain. The first 200 meters is above the base camp. So there's a mountain of 200 meters where this mineralization is in the mountain. So we're eating up that mountain right now slowly. We're just at the very, very first level. And the grade is good. We see extension. The contractor is doing a very good job and we will take the range from 500 to 1,000 tons a day. We have the stockpile and the underground is moving up and it's just getting better. We, and Rafael said it, we want to be disciplined in mining because that's... extremely important to be disciplined and if we do get lower grade this year, we will take it out. We're not going to run to the next stove because we want to get a better grade. Discipline in mining is the key and we are extremely disciplined. We are also very disciplined with LNC. So if something looks a little weak and we need to step back a little bit to secure the stove, we do that. We have a very good record of health and safety, we want to continue that way, no casualties, our LCI is extremely good and we want to continue. So you have a company that is well capitalized, that has a plan that's 99.999 built, that is nutrition, and take a look at the last video, it is beautiful. It's wide, it's open, it has capacity to grow, and it's just about done. We also, and then you know, the big story for IAF is the exploration of site. We have between 16 and 17 drills turning. Sometimes the little RC drill is not turning, so it's not powerful enough at the boom engine, but it's extremely, you know, it's a very big program. David was telling us this morning that he has 80 people on his team running exploration between So when you have 160,000 meters of drilling on many targets and on structures, well, you get very, very good results. So when you see the new plan coming to life, when you see the drilling continuing, the exploration results continuing, the stability of the country we're in, As you know, jurisdiction is a key component of mining these days, and we are probably one of the best jurisdictions in the world for mining. The team is extremely motivated to show you and the world how strong that project is and will continue to be. And on the corporate social responsibility side, we continue to have fantastic success. We will put out a video, most likely next week, on the saffron farm that we are sponsoring. You will see it's very, very nice, extremely interesting, and that's part of our social license to operate. So that concludes this Q3 call. It's not a quarter that we're cleaning, and we saw some of the notes this morning, and And he said, yeah, there's a miss on cost, and there's a miss on production, and there's a miss on grade. But at the end of the day, the only miss is on grade. Because if you miss on grade, if you look at the throughput at the two plants, it's better than last quarter. If you look at the availability of the two plants, it's 95%. And the cost is who's capitalizing development. So I agree that it's not a quarter that we liked. And we know that it was a great issue, and we've addressed that, and I've had it explained why. And we believe that going forward, things are coming back to where they should. Thank you very much. We will see you in Q1 for the year-end call, where we'll have a full year of operation. Keep watching our little video. There will be more to come on corporate social responsibility and on the plan as well. and we look forward to keeping you informed. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.