Quintel completes the acquisition of the Tazoult silver mine in Morocco

Quintel Corporation Limited has completed the acquisition of 75% of Société Minière de Tazoult SA, which owns and operates the Tazoult silver mine in the Moroccan Anti-Atlas, for a cash consideration of US$318 million. Operatorship transferred on 20 February 2026. The Moroccan state minerals agency retains 20% and the Tazoult Regional Development Trust, which represents the surrounding communes, retains 5%.

Tazoult is a high-grade underground mine that has produced silver continuously since 1996 and delivered 4.12 million ounces in calendar 2025 at an all-in sustaining cost of US$13.40 per ounce. It carries a reserve of 6.4 million tonnes at 232 grams per tonne, supporting eleven years of production, and the deposit remains open at depth.

The transaction was funded from cash and a partial drawing on the group revolving credit facility. Group net debt to EBITDA rises to approximately 0.9 times on a pro forma basis, within the board’s stated limit of 1.5 times. No equity was issued and the ownership of the group is unchanged.

Why this asset

• A primary silver mine, which is scarce: roughly 70% of world silver supply is a by-product of other mining and does not respond to the silver price.
• Half of silver demand is industrial — photovoltaic paste above all — which places the investment case alongside the group’s copper business rather than its gold business.
• A decade of under-investment by the previous owner that is straightforward and inexpensive to correct: development rates, grade control and ground support.
• A grid connection with materially lower carbon intensity than any other Quintel operation, ninety kilometres from a major solar complex.
• A structurally simple, high-grade deposit that does not require a new processing route, a new corridor or a new skill the group does not already have.

What comes with it

Between 2011 and 2020 villagers from the communes around the mine occupied its borehole pumping station in a dispute over groundwater abstraction in a catchment that receives less than 180 millimetres of rain a year. The occupation ended in a settlement that capped abstraction, funded a village water scheme and paid compensation. It did not establish whether the mine or the drought caused the decline in the springs, and it did not stop the mine drawing from the shared aquifer.

“We knew about the water dispute before we bid and we priced it,” said Thandeka Mokoena, Chief Executive. “What we are not going to do is treat it as a closed matter because a piece of paper was signed in 2020. We have commissioned an independent study of the catchment, scoped jointly with the commune councils, with one of the three hydrogeologists chosen by them and the raw data published as it is collected. If it finds that our abstraction is materially responsible, we will reduce throughput. We have put that in writing to the councils.”

The company also disclosed that the mine’s tailings storage facility, an upstream-raised wet dam commissioned in 1996, does not conform to the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management. An independent Engineer of Record has been appointed, instrumentation has been trebled and independent review moved from annual to monthly. A filtration plant enabling dry stacking is scheduled for commissioning in 2028.

Quintel restated the previous owner’s reserve downwards by 8.4% on acquisition, principally by reclassifying material where drill spacing did not support the proved category, and increased the closure provision from US$18 million to US$52 million on the basis of an independent estimate prepared during due diligence.

Transaction summary

The mine will report into the group operations structure through a new North Africa office in Casablanca. No redundancies are planned; the entire workforce transferred on existing terms, and the group’s minimum standards on safety, remuneration floors and the right to stop work apply from the transfer date.

Quintel will report silver as a separate commodity from the 2026 half year. The group’s 2030 emissions target will not be rebased to accommodate the acquisition; the additional approximately 34 kilotonnes of CO₂e a year will be reported separately against the unchanged 2019 baseline.