Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Aya Gold & Silver's fourth quarter and year-end 2023 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. Ms. Hanna, you may begin your conference.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Aya's fourth quarter 2023 results conference call. My name is Ruth Hanna, and I'm the IR and Communications Manager, dialing in with some of the Aya team in Montreal and Morocco this morning. On the call today, we have Benoit La Salle, President and CEO; Ugo Landry-Tolszczuk, Chief Financial Officer; Raphaël Beaudoin, Vice President, Operations; and David Lalonde, Head of Exploration. We'll finish today's event with a Q&A session with the team. Please contact our IR team directly with any follow-up questions that are not addressed during the call. Before we begin, I'd 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 today's news release, as well as on SEDAR+ and at 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. Hello, everyone. We can summarize the year as saying that 2023 was an exceptional year for Aya. We've delivered a very strong year with record revenue, record earnings and record cash flow. We generated $42.8 million in revenue, and we generated $21.2 million of cash flow. The net profit of $5.3 million is a 281% increase year over year. Furthermore, we have low total cash costs at $12.50 per ounce sold. We are also on track to deliver our plant expansion, the 2,700 ton per day Zgounder mine expansion. We are today on time and on budget for commissioning in Q2 2024.
To start the commissioning, we have a stockpile of 250,000 tons of ore at year-end for commissioning of the new mill, and we've also have a combined mining rate, underground and open pit, of 2,300 tons per day at year-end. You remember that we need to be at 2,700 tons when we will achieve nameplate capacity. We're fully funded, and we have a really healthy balance sheet. The cash at the close of the quarter stands at $70.3 million, and that does not include the $57 million bought deal in Canadian dollars, CAD 77.6 million, that was done in Q1 of 2024.
We've also delivered the milestones on the EBRD CTF financing loan, and it's the reason why they have disbursed so far as per the schedule. So we've continued to invest in our growth opportunities. You remember that last year we doubled the Boumadine budget, extending the strike length of the structure to 4.2 kilometer and discovering new types of mineralization. We've also signed a 20-year renewable PPA, which we will be connected to the grid shortly, and that has also an effect of reducing the cost of energy for the new project. We've increased our land position by 20% at Zgounder and by 200% at Boumadine.
So this will take me to the next page, if you're following on the slide, to page four. And just to review quickly, the actual production versus the guidance, 'cause we know it's extremely important. So for the year 2023, our guidance was between 1.7 to 1.9, and we've achieved 1,970,000 ounces, so beating our production guidance. Our cash cost in the guidance was estimated at $14.40, and we ended the year at $12.50, and we all know that this is in the low quartile of our sector. The average grade process, our guidance was 264, we were at 250, which is in line, and the mill recovery. So the KPIs for the mill, the mill recoveries, the mill availabilities were all good.
The mill recovery is 86%, and the guidance was 86%, so we've done extremely well. In the total ton process, we were budgeting 245,000 for the year, and we did 281,000. So the plants have worked above nameplate capacity throughout the year. We, as you know, the nameplate capacity is 700 ton per day, and the average for the year is 772 ton per day. So we've done extremely well. Going to page 5, just a quick summary of the last 5 years. You see the production growth when we took over in 2020 to 2023. Obviously, 2024 and further, there'll be a major change as the new plant will be commissioned and in production.
So you see the silver grade process as well at the bottom, from 2019 to 2023, you know, being constant between 225 and 250. The recoveries, when we arrived, were around 60, and now we are more towards the 86% to 87%, which is excellent. And the ore process, as discussed, that is based on the availability of the plant. We now are extremely good with the availability of the plant, and that's why we have the ore process at 281,000 tonnes for the year. Moving on to page 6 of the presentation. On a cash flow basis, it's quite interesting to see that, today, for 2023, we're looking at $21 million of operating cash flow compared to the previous year.
It is a record year. On gross margin, we are also on a record year, as you can see, on page 5 - on page 6, sorry. Cost of sales is a function, of course, of our cash costs and all costs. It's quite aligned with, you know, where we should be at $25 million of cost of sales. And the cash cost is, as I said, extremely good, being at 12.5, $12.50 per silver ounce of sold. So, page 7 is just the picture of the new construction. I know we give you a video every month that you watch carefully, but it's coming very well.
Again, we can say that, you know, this project is coming on time and on budget. So, there are a couple of weeks left, and it will be... We will start commissioning towards the end of Q2. So on page 8, you have the Zgounder expansion. We have some statistics. So we are on budget. We have incurred $110 million so far, and we have the other $38 million committed, so we are within the budget and the CapEx that we had identified in 2022. The underground development is on track. That is doing extremely well.
90% of the lateral development is done, 80% of the vertical development is done, and if you recall, the most sensitive item of the project expansion was to make sure that the mining was gonna be at 2,700 tons a day. So that is, you know, on track and developing extremely well. The plant is all on site, so now it's a question of assembly. So the power line, the substation, the Merrill-Crowe, the silver room, the ball mill, obviously, all of that is on site. It's just a matter now of putting it all together.
So we gave you a little progress chart of the processing plant, the underground and the open pit mine, the tailings, the water management, the electrical infrastructure, and the on-site infrastructure. So again, moving smoothly, all this being done in with our team and with our EPC contractor. So you have here a picture of a brand-new water reservoir and tailings dam. Now, you know that our $100 million loan with EBRD is ESG-driven, so those elements were extremely, extremely important. And they come to site every quarter, they review the work that's been done, and as you can see, this is state-of-the-art execution for the water reservoir and the water basin and the tailings dam. The pylons are 90% up. We're we have a few left to go.
The cables have been pulled, and the station has arrived on site. The exploration program is always a major focus because, as you all know, we create value by increasing the ounces in the ground and by finding new deposits. So for 2024, and we've put that in the press release of this morning, at Zgounder, we will be drilling... At the main mine, we will be drilling 15,000 meters minimum, because often, as you know, over the years, once we've been through the budget, we looked at what needs to be done, and we increase it. At Boumadine, we've completed last year 76,000 meters. This year, we are going to do 120,000 meters.
That's the budgeted amount of drilling, which is 60,000 meters on the known structure, which we refer to as the 4.2-kilometer strike, which we follow with geophysics on 6 kilometer, and we will also do 60,000 meters to test new targets. Because the team has identified parallel targets that are within our permits, the reason for us to augment the number of permits that we have, so we will divide that half and half. Obviously, the second half, the 60,000 meters, is something that will move based on what we find with geophysics, and that's something extremely important. We are doing the geophysics right now. It's really generating targets, and it's ongoing.
Zgounder Regional, also a very important aspect of our strategy as we're looking for an additional mine or deposit to feed the three plants that we have at Zgounder, or that we will have. So the budget there is 10,000 meters. We're looking for similar mineralization that we have at Zgounder, which is silver. But we also are doing the geophysics at Tirzzit, and that we know was a copper-silver mine historically. We know that, you know, there is a structure there. Is it just a structure for artisanal mining, or can it be a structure for us? We will find that out with the geophysics, geochem and, of course, drilling throughout the year. Now, there's a new project that where we're gonna do a little bit of work called Amizmiz.
It's a project that's been in our portfolio for a long time. It was actually one of the first project that this company acquired in 2010. It's, it was a gold mine. Historically, it's a very high-grade mine, and the team have looked at it and believe that it's worth a bit of work, not a lot of work, but to go and find out what is really the size of this deposit. So that's something to look forward to as we, as the year, goes by. On page 11, you have Zgounder, the main structure, that we refer to every time we make a presentation. We've been drilling this. We're a little late on our drilling, so last year, we were supposed to do 20,000 meters.
We didn't do it because we focused more on the development of the underground for the mine, and we did not have access to the lower level to drill. We know that we were a little late, but we're making it up right now. Something very interesting happened in the past month, and we found that the rhyolite, which is the footwall of the deposit, was carrying mineralization, and one of the drill holes that went into the rhyolite gave us 1,089.89 grams per ton over 13.5 meters. So that was quite a surprise. Of course, David and the team immediately went back to the core shack, pulled out all the drill logs and all the core that went into the rhyolite to reassess it.
It was, at least locally and with everybody on site, that the rhyolite was not mineralized until we then got those results and found out that it is- it could be mineralized. So that's a very interesting development. Now, on page 12, you have the results of the work that has been done by the team on site in identifying another Zgounder look-alike, because that's what we're looking for, to debug a little bit the Zgounder mine. And when I say debug, it's because it's- there's a lot- it's, it's gonna be very busy. At 2,700 tonnes per day, that is the traffic capacity of that deposit.
I mean, it'll be many trucks up and down, and so we would like to find another pit, another underground structure where we could have autonomous mining that could also feed the plant. So the team have identified similar structures to Zgounder on the far east, and we are currently drilling the one to the far east, and there's one to the south as well, which we are currently drilling right now. So we are looking forward for these results. The team is very positive. It's the same geological sequence that we have at Zgounder. And as we know, historically, Managem at Imiter, which is a kind of a lookalike, not identical, but pure silver mine, they have discovered around their main pit and their main underground mine, many satellite deposits.
That's what we are looking with this work that we're doing. Now, coming to Boumadine, which is on page 13. Boumadine is, is a very, very interesting project, as you know. We've talked about it. We've had very good results, very good drill results. We raised the money in Q1 because we've announced that we're gonna put that money to work at Boumadine. So we have budgeted, as we said, 120,000 meters this year. Again, 60 on the main zone, 60,000 meters on those, these new targets that are being generated, which we are- some we already have, others will come from the ongoing geophysics. It's really, really interesting. Now, you've also seen that we're adding permits. So at year-end, we had added 4 new permits.
We announced more permits last week, and there'll be more coming. We are in the process of hopefully controlling the whole district, as we did at Zgounder, by the way. You know, when we arrived at Zgounder, we had not a lot of ground, and now we have close to 400 square kilometers of ground, and we have, you know, most of the permits that we want to have at Zgounder. We want to do the same thing at Boumadine. So our land position, which originally was at the very beginning, was very small... is now, it was 36 square kilometers, the original mining permit. Now we are at 141 square kilometer, and that is, will keep growing.
Last year, we did some metallurgical testing because it's always a question that we all have, is how are we gonna treat this material? The initial tests gave us, you know, mid-80s to high 80s recovery using different methods. We have not yet decided on the flow sheet. We've looked at four methods. We are continuing, Raphaël, as a team on this, and we are continuing to work to have the optimal flow sheet and method that we will be using. Obviously, it's a function of the ore, and David is finding different types of ore to the north or to the south.
So all of that will be taken into account, but ultimately, Boumadine is now becoming a Tier One project, in size, in grade, and it's, we will be spending a lot of money and a lot of time on this project. On page 14, you have the geophysics that we've been using and some of the hits that we've had over the year, 2023. So you see that, you know, the grade is 1,000 grams per ton over 23.5 meters. I mean, it is, it's a very good grade project.
It's gold, silver, lead, and zinc, and a little bit of copper, and it's really well set in this, as you can see with the geophysics, in the pyrite structure. Now, furthermore, if you look at the press release where we announced the results, there was figure number 3, showing some grab sample towards the north, where copper, you know, was really, really present, 6% to 12% copper. So those were grab samples, so obviously, we, you know, we know what they mean, but it's also interesting to see that there's copper in this system.
I mean, this means, again, I don't want to take much, much more time, but it's a small project yet, but we think that with the gold price and this currently, the historical mining and the historical resource, which is, you know, it's not ours, it was there way before our time, they were looking at about 13 gram per ton. It's an underground system, but we're gonna take, you know, the work that was done historically. We will review it, we will do a little bit of work, and we'll see what's out there before we, you know, we do a corporate transaction on it, or we, you know. We need to know what's there before we do, we make a decision.
Now, to close, of course, the ESG is extremely important in this world of mining. For us, it's always been, it will continue to be, to the point where we teamed up with EBRD for a $100 million facility. So the ESG component is extremely, extremely important. So on health and safety, we've done quite well. We had, you know, very few lost days. We had a lot of training, 10,000 hours of training. We had no fatalities, which is something you never wanna have. So it's, 2023 has been a big year of transition, of training, but, you know, we are pleased with the results.
Obviously, 2024 is, is a more delicate year because we're increasing the number of employees, we're increasing the throughput, we have more production, so we have to be extremely careful, and we know that, and we're acting accordingly. So the Clean Technology Fund, the milestones were achieved this year, milestone number 1, so that reduced our rate on the CTF tranches to 6.98%. Excuse me. We have other milestones to meet over the years, and as we meet them, the rates are gonna be coming down even further. On the community highlights, something of great importance to all of us. Education, we organize classes and online classes for the schools in our community. Health, we have mobile clinics, and our mine doctor is also available for the community.
Water access, we've, we help villages in, in securing water access, and we do that, for all the communities where we are. And, as well, we have, the economic project, which creating of, of, of sustainable development, and we launch a saffron farm, and we've had our first harvest. You may know that, but Morocco is a, is a, is a, is a saffron producer, like Iran and, and countries in the Middle East, and, the quality of the saffron is, is extremely, extremely high. So to conclude our year, it was a very, very good year for 2023 for Aya in 2023. Silver production and cost guidance, done. The milestone on the, for Zgounder Silver Mine expansion, not totally done, but almost done. And again, you're following it with our, the videos that we put out all the time.
The Zgounder underground and regional drilling, that's ongoing. We did some. It's ongoing this year, to complete all the drilling that we wanna do. The Boumadine resource estimate is just about ready. It will come out in two weeks, ± a few days. We're just about ready. It's an ongoing process, but the drilling is ongoing. Out of the 120,000 meters that we wanted to do this year, we're already past 12,000 meters already, so we're 10% done, and it's ongoing. We will have or we have, I mean, it's a question of days, 7 drills turning. And on the ESG front, which is, again, a major, major component, we did meet all the milestones. EBRD has disbursed $85 million of the $100 million.
EBRD is going to site in a couple of weeks with the team. They will review again all their questionnaires regarding the loan, and we will draw on that $15 million, that last $15 million, in the month of April, June, May, June. May, June. May, June, sorry, May, June. So, operator, this concludes the official portion of the presentation, and we will open the floor to questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Puneet Singh from Eight Capital.
Thanks. Good morning, Benoit and team. A couple questions for me. You guys have a habit of beating guidance to better again, this year on production cost speed, too. I know this is an expansion year, so probably better to err on the side of caution, but just, just wondering how much conservatism you're baking into those numbers, especially on the grades, because I remember the tech report was calling for you to mine some of that 300 gram per ton material up front. So just asking, how conservative are you being there? Because it'll be a cost driver. And do you think you could be into some of that higher grade material by the end of the year if things go well?
Puneet, I'll pass this over to Raphaël, who runs this on a daily basis.
Hi, this is Raphaël. So the grade of Zgounder is obviously the driver of this mine and also quite a challenge considering the geology of the deposit. And as we increase tonnage, obviously, to keep the grade stable is our focus. In 2024, there are many things coming up to play. We are, once again, almost doubling our mining rate. We need to commission the new plant, and we also will include the open pit ore within the new mill, as we'll commission it. Throughout 2023, we've kept the grade fairly high during production, which ensured us very good production in 2023, and we have stockpiled, let's say, lower grade, to ensure a smooth commissioning and not wasting any ounce.
That's a classical strategy that we're certainly not inventing. That being said, we really need to focus on commissioning the mill, making sure to bring availability up, to bring recovery up, to make this mill run at nameplate, and only then, we will slowly increase the grade to the mill. Does that answer your question?
Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks. I had one more question on exploration. If, if David's on the line, I'd like to hear maybe the expanded take on that rhyolite because it looks like it could be a game changer for you guys. And, and my final question is, it's been a couple of years now since you've updated that the Zgounder resource. When do you think you'll update the market next on that? Because you've been hitting some great intercepts, so just wondering when you'll, when you'll look to update the market on that. Thanks.
Uh.
Hi, David Lalonde speaking. Concerning the rhyolite, yes, we believe it can be a game changer. It's still early to fully understand it, but so far the take is related to flat faults through the rhyolite that most likely could have served as a conduit to bring the mineralization in. It definitely change our approach in the coming drilling program. And as Benoit mentioned, we are also re-logging, resampling all the rhyolite intervals that was historically not sampled because believed to be barren. That's one thing. Concerning the resource update, we are in the progress of making them. We expected to make it earlier, but the underground development was slow, and the drilling last year was slow.
Currently this year, we're already 58% complete with our underground drilling program, so we expect by beginning of H2 to be able to update the market on the resource at Zgounder.
Okay. Sorry, so the second half of this year, you'll look to update the market?
Yeah, the beginning of the second half, hopefully.
Okay. Sounds good, David. Thanks very much.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Eleanor Magdzinski from SCP Resource Finance.
... Good morning, everyone, and great work putting together the last quarter and year-end results for all of us today. As always, a great presentation. I had a couple questions, first on the underground versus open pit splits of tons and grade for the quarter. I didn't see that when I was kind of looking through, and I was just curious, kind of what-
Eleanor, Eleanor, Eleanor, can you speak up a little bit, please?
Yeah, absolutely. Sorry, I think it was my headphones. Is this better?
Yeah.
Is this better? Sorry.
Yep.
Okay, wonderful. Yeah, I just had a question, the first one on splits between underground and open pit, for tons and grade. I see the totals were reported, but I was just kind of curious of the breakdown on that first.
The open pit, you mean for last quarter of 2023?
That's right, yeah.
So we mine on the underground 114,000 ton at 210 gram per ton for the underground, and the open pit with 60,000 ton at 186. So the open pit obviously has a strip. We mine on the mountainside, and we will have quarter at 180, and we will have quarters at 280. So the split right now, we mine the open pit at a rate of between 500 and 1,000 ton per day. And the underground, more around 1,000 to 1,500 ton per day.
We can expect over the next 2-3 years, the open pit to feed the mill to about 25%-35% of the mill feed.
Okay, awesome. Thank you very much. My second question, I guess has to do with the ramp-up schedule. I know, there was, you know, the range of guidance, but in terms of how things, are expected in your view with commissioning towards the end of Q2, do you feel, you know, in the fourth quarter, that would be, the, the major kind of step up and in terms of like things being commissioned and getting to, to nameplate? Or, you know, is it a six-month kind of process to get there? I know obviously you're set up well with the stockpiles and, and everything and, and, kind of finalizing the process plant and things like that. But, yeah, just curious on kind of the timelines, in the ramp-up schedule.
So we look at commissioning the plant towards the end of Q2, like Benoit said. Now we are towards the end of construction, talking about electrical and piping and quite in a construction crunch right now. Things are good. You know, ramp-up, it's always... Ramp-up is never hit or miss, but it's never quite smooth either. So we can expect. There's a sequence. Obviously, there's a sequence, and there's nothing new in that. It's the cold commissioning or verification, cold commissioning, hot commissioning, and so on.
So we'll start that around June, and then we'll need, you know, a couple of months to bring that up to a certain rate, which we hope to be close to 80%-90% capacity, and then we'll stabilize the production towards the end of Q3 and hopefully have a very good Q4. So that's the plan. And about the guidance, as you can imagine, if we push back commissioning by two or three weeks, or we front it by two or three weeks, it has huge difference on production because the new plant will carry the bulk of production as soon as it started.
Hence, the spread into the guidance for 2024.
Awesome. Yeah, makes perfect sense. Thanks very much for that. I just had one more question related to the expansion, or actually maybe two more, but just quick ones. Just a question on infrastructure progress. You know, every quarter you've been reporting, you know, how things are going. It seems, in my view anyways, maybe that's probably not as critical path as some of the other ones. And was just wondering, kind of what's included in the on-site infrastructure development that's still required. So that's aside from, obviously, the process plant and electrical commissioning, which, I mean, obviously, they're pretty big-ticket items, but for the remainder, on-site infrastructure, just curious, kind of what's included in that type of stuff.
The on-site infrastructure includes essentially everything else. So we're talking about here some housing for extra workers, some small roads we need to finalize. I can think also of different pipe works that we need to do between water basins and plant, and many other things of which are not necessarily critical for the commissioning of the new plant or the ramp-up of the mine, but has to get done at one point or another. For example, our underground garage, who's been dragging along a bit, but we have a surface garage, so it's not as near, it's not as critical as the rest. So sometimes it falls on second priority, but it will get done, and it's on a critical path.
So, that's what explains the other on-site infrastructures that might be a bit slower as opposed to everything else.
... Okay, awesome. Yeah, that's kind of what I figured. It just seems obviously you, you prioritize anything that could be more critical path in terms of the commissioning, and then, like you said, those are just things that need to get done. But, yeah, kind of they'll eventually get done and get tacked on, and it's not as-- it's a lot of smaller jobs, let's say. I guess my last question, I'm cognizant I've been hogging the line here, so this will be my last one. But just in terms of the anticipated spend, so, you know, if you take the budgeted CapEx of $159 million, there's still, you know, about $49 million total of spend.
So that in addition to the $36 million of exploration spend allocated for this year, I was just kind of curious on if there is a, a timeline or an expected timeline of spend for that over the-- or for that total over the next, you know, whatever, I guess the three quarters, at this point now, or, or four quarters, if you could kind of speak, retrospectively a little bit.
Sure. Yeah. So on exploration, you can kind of see that pretty evenly split, a little bit back, H2, and you can see here, we had an image or a number of meters done at Boumadine. So it's a little bit pushed towards H2, but exploration is pretty linear. You can divide it by four or take 60% or 65%, H2 versus H1. And in terms of construction, I would say it's the reverse. It's probably 75% of that, 80% of that in H1 and the remainder in H2.
Okay, awesome. Thank you so much. Appreciate all of the feedback.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Don DeMarco from National Bank Financial.
Thank you, operator. And, Benoit, congratulations on the guidance beat in 2023, and hopefully you have a guidance beat in 2024. For 2024, clearly, it's gonna be a back-end loaded year. Can you give us some color on the grades and costs quarter by quarter? And what costs would you expect in Q4 when the plant's fully ramped up?
Hi, Don. It's a bit fortune telling. We're not, we're not gonna guide quarter by quarter, I think. We've known, and I think the history of the production of the company has shown here in the last few years, like, there's some good quarters and there's some less good quarters. That's a function of the grade that's at the mill. We're ramping up mine production. We're in commissioning. I think for us, we're gonna stick to an annual guidance here.
Okay, fair enough. What, what's the grade of the stockpiles? Maybe you can tell us, like, how you plan to use the stockpile throughout the commissioning and maybe as a percentage of total feed.
Mm-hmm.
Well, we've been mining in 2023, about 215 grams per tonne, and we've processed 250 grams per tonne. So the, obviously the stockpile is quite a bit lower in the range of 160, and we have about 250,000 tonnes of it. That will be the sole feed for the, say, couple months of commissioning, and then we'll slowly include our high grade on the open pit, our high grade on the open pit, or that will follow, and we will bring up, we'll bring up the grade as we stabilize production. Our key target here is not to waste ounces, essentially. So there's no good or bad ounces, but there is lower and higher grade ore.
We want to make sure commissioning is done with the lowest stockpile, and as soon as recovery gets up, we will diminish the blend of the stockpile in the feed of the plant, and we will bring up the grade.
Okay. Okay, that sounds reasonable. And then for my last question, shifting to Boumadine. So David, you've got a large airborne geophysics campaign planned, being flown over Boumadine in the area. What do you expect to find from this, and when do you expect to release results?
Uh-
Sorry?
Yeah, the geophysical survey right now is about 70% complete, and we like the results so much that we are planning to extend it. The idea of the survey is we wanted to cover the new license, of course, but took the chance as well to take a different technology that will allow us to measure conductivity all the way down to 1 kilometer at depth, and resistivity to 2,000 meters, so 2 kilometers at depth. When we had the original survey at Boumadine, the depth coverage was about 600 meters, if you can recall. So the idea is to look for deep routes of the system, eventually start looking for porphyry-type mineralization, and of course, to identify any massive sulfides that we could find in the new areas.
So hopefully the survey will be completed in May, with final reports and data processing probably late H1. And as soon as we have nice colorful maps, I'm sure we'll have lots of pressure to feed the market with good news, and we're quite confident about it.
Okay. That's all for me. Good luck with the ramp up and commissioning of Zgounder.
Thanks, Don.
Thank you. One moment for our next question... Our next question comes from the line of Justin Chan from SCP Resource Finance.
Hi, guys. Congratulations! Believe it or not, we have, we have a couple more questions. Maybe just the first one on Boumadine and, and the exploration budget. In the past, you've expanded budgets later in the year. I guess, how much potential is there for that? And then in terms of the timeline from the first resource onward, should we expect a, a, a scoping study, or, or would the next update be another resource update before you start wrapping economics on it?
Yeah. So on the exploration budget, I think at Boumadine, we've taken quite a big bite here to move from 76,000 to 120,000 meters. A lot of it is greenfield as well, and so we're gonna have to see-- we're gonna have to see kind of what those results of that greenfield exploration gives us, and that, like, like in the past, has driven what we'll do in the future. David already mentioned the results of our regional geophysics has been exciting, and we've already extended that a little bit. At Zgounder, again, I think there's quite a few targets, especially in the regional, that are interesting, and that'll really depend on what we find and follow-ups on that. So it's-- because it's such an early...
Like, in the past, we've had, we've had a lot of targets kind of established, and there was a lot of things that we wanted to do. Now we're in, now we're in, last year, the team generated several targets. We've budgeted to, to follow on of those targets, and then now it really depends on results. So it's hard to say, to project forward, "Okay, how are we gonna modify it or not?" The results will dictate that. We have the capital if we wanted to, to extend it. To extend it, the results have to be there. On what's next for Boumadine after the resource estimate, again, I think a lot of that will be driven.
We've done some work where we've budgeted some engineering work this year, but it's still a new project. We haven't been working on it for a very long time, so hopefully, there's still a lot of nice surprises associated to Boumadine. We think there are, and so I think we'll do a scoping study when we're confident in that the resource we have is a good representation of what Boumadine is as a project. So it's an ongoing thing. I think Raphaël's team on the engineering side is following closely, to make sure that when we want to do a scoping study, a lot of the field work that needs to be done, which is the long part of doing the study, is executed.
But we have to make sure that the deposit and the resources that we, that we present, are a good representation of the project.
Okay, gotcha. So probably, just reading between the lines, it's probably a scoping study would be less likely this year, more likely next year, given that you have a lot of, a lot of results to come in that could determine whether or not you think the resources is where it is or it can be grown.
It seems like a reasonable hypothesis to me, Justin.
Okay, great. Thanks. And then on, just a question on the mine sequence at Zgounder. I mean, if the ramp-up is going quite well and the recoveries are where you want them, will the... I know, Raph, you mentioned that the open pit will be contributing high grade before, you know, first, once you go through low grade stockpiles. But I'm just curious on the underground sequence. Will you have, is there much high grade planned this year in the mine sequence that you could, that you could blend in, if you're happy with how the plant is performing, or is that mostly coming in maybe next year?
I think in 2024, the high-grade of the mill is certainly not the priority. As we've been going down the level, what we want is also to switch our mining method to include some long-hole stopes. And I think once we'll be ready with long-hole stope, we will attack some of those high-grade pillars, low in the lower levels to 1925 and 1900. That being said, because we worked on the infrastructure for quite a while, we have done many stope access over the last 2-3 months. So, I mean, we do have a stockpile management plan, and we do stockpile the high-grade, especially of the open pit.
The rest has been fed more or less to the mill over the last couple years of what we've been mining. Right now, the focus of the underground mining team is to prepare a stope access, and we will mine those high-grade stopes as we are, as the mill needs them and as we are ready for the stopes that require long hole, long hole stoping.
Okay, thanks. That's, that's really good color. I appreciate it.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Soock from Stifel.
Thanks, operator. Hi, Benoit team. Congrats on a great 2023. Just a few quick ones for me here. First one is around reconciliation of the, the underground, specifically. I know, I know it's a difficult, kind of poddy ore body, but how has it been reconciling versus your, you call it, year ahead, year look ahead, geologic model? Again, just kind of focused on, on the, the grade guidance here for 2024, and wondering if there's any, any kind of longer-term implications or if that's just a function of the ramp-up. Thanks.
So reconciliation at Zgounder is an ongoing battle, an ongoing technical fun. I don't know how else to put it. What we see at Zgounder is historical stopes. They always give more than we hope for, so which is very good. On the new stopes, when we do things right, we tend to get things right. Now it's excessively variable. I mean, we've seen the quarters we got. We got quarters, and they are upper 300, we got quarters in the lower 200, and the long-term trend is somewhere in between. What we see at Zgounder is when we take a whole quarter and we reconcile it, we're not far off on the grade side.
But stope by stope, it can vary like 5 times the grade or 20% of the grade when we look on a stope-by-stope basis. We always have more than 20 stopes that's operating at the same time as Zgounder, out of which sometimes 80% of our production comes from 2 or 3 stopes. So yeah, if you miss one of them, grade goes sideways very fast. On the good side sometimes, and obviously on the bad side sometimes. So the key here of reconciliation of Zgounder is to have many stopes open, to make sure to scan everything right, and to make sure to be ahead in definition. That's what we've been working on.
So what I can say in a nutshell on reconciliation is when we look at the big scheme of things at Zgounder, things do reconcile not too bad. When we go stope-by-stope, sometimes it's, yeah, sometimes it's a mess. So the key to solve that is to prepare the stope access long, a long time before we need them, and this is what we've been doing the last three months. And what is comforting, though, is when we look at it quarter by quarter and we put the stopes together, we're not too far off.
Yeah, it makes sense. I know it makes it tough to plan around, but good to hear that overall, kind of shaking out, where we're expected in the big picture. Appreciate that. The last one for me here is, just on the Boumadine resource. I think, you know, this was originally kind of guided to come out mid-February, so can you provide any more color on, kind of the delay here now that we're looking at, kind of mid-April for, potential release?
Yeah, Stephen, we, you know, when we decided to push it out a little bit, it was really a question of making sure we were able to negotiate permits around our two mining permits or one mining permit. Now it's one permit. And, so you saw that we've added probably close to 10 permits so far, 4 last year, I think 6 this year. We're in negotiation on probably 5 or 6 more. And, we wanted to do this because, we think that once we put out the resource, it'll be a bit more difficult. So we are very happy where we are right now. We have targets or permits that we target and we want to have. And, but that being said, we, you...
The geophysics that we're doing covers all the ground that we want to have and that we have. So we're in a very good position. We have good information, and hence, it was the reason for pushing it out a bit. And we're almost there now. We, you know, early April, probably the second week of April, we'll be done acquiring what we want to acquire. Others may not be done, but we will wait for them for a little bit later. And the resource will be coming out on, as we, you know, as we explain on that main structure, 4.2 kilometer long, and that will be the resource that we will present.
Perfect. Appreciate it. That's, that's all for me, guys. Thanks again.
Thank you. At this time, I would now like to turn the conference back over to Benoit La Salle, CEO and President, for closing remarks.
Thank you very much. Thank you, all of you, for assisting today. 2023 was a stellar year. It was a very, very good year production-wise, construction, exploration, ESG. We had a very, very good year. We will continue on our, on this trend. I think 2024 will also be a very, very good year for Aya. I know some of you were looking at a bit of a higher guidance on production, but you know, we've always been very conservative, and that's something we maintain and we will maintain. It's discipline. Raphaël is going to site next week for a couple of weeks or a couple of months, as we're getting into commissioning.
So, we're confident that this will continue to deliver. We're certainly confident that the geology will continue to deliver at Zgounder and at Boumadine. And we will follow with our ESG program as well, which is extremely important. So thank you for being there. Thank you for following us, and we are always available for comments and discussion. And we really will probably be talking to you in the next few weeks on a Boumadine update call with you separately, or maybe some of you will do it all together, but it's coming in the next few weeks. So thank you very much. And again, we had a great 2023.
The team is motivated, and we're continuing on the same trajectory for 2024.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.