Does First Majestic Silver Corp refine their own silver
Executive summary
silver">First Majestic both processes and refines portions of the silver it produces: its Mexican mine sites operate processing plants that produce concentrates and doré, and the company operates a minting/refining arm (First Mint) that turns doré into .999+ silver rounds and bars for sale [1] [2] [3]. At the same time, the company continues to ship concentrates between sites and sell concentrates externally, so not every ounce is refined in‑house from ore to minted bullion [1] [4].
1. Mining to mill: in‑house processing at multiple Mexican sites
First Majestic’s portfolio includes multiple operating mines with onsite mills and processing plants—Santa Elena, San Dimas, La Encantada, La Parrilla and others—which treat ore to produce concentrates and silver precipitates as part of normal operations, and the company has explicitly described shipping silver precipitates to La Parrilla for doré production to reduce smelting and refining costs [5] [6] [1]. Those disclosures show the company performs metallurgical processing steps on its mined ore in its own facilities rather than simply selling raw ore, supporting the claim that First Majestic does internal refining work at the mill level [5] [1].
2. First Mint: a corporate minting/refining capability
Beyond milling and doré production, First Majestic owns and operates a minting facility called First Mint, LLC, and offers a portion of its production as finished bullion—rounds and bars—sold to the public, which indicates the company conducts final refining and minting in‑house [2] [4]. Third‑party descriptions of First Mint say it refines roughly 95% pure doré into .999+ pure silver rounds, confirming the existence of an internal pathway from doré to investment‑grade bullion [3]. This vertical integration aligns with multiple company and industry profiles that characterize First Majestic as a vertically focused miner with downstream processing capabilities [7] [8].
3. What in‑house refining looks like in practice — doré, not always electrolytic full refinery work
Company investor updates emphasize that once operational, silver precipitates and concentrates are processed into doré bars at La Parrilla, reducing external smelting costs; that phrasing signals the company’s in‑country conversion to doré rather than necessarily running a full commercial refinery with large‑scale electrolytic refining capacity for every product stream [1]. Industry and finance writeups also treat First Majestic as having on‑site processing and some refining capacity that supports bullion production, but they stop short of describing it as a global standalone refinery handling all refining steps for all concentrates without external processors [9] [10]. In short, First Majestic refines significant volumes internally to doré and minted bullion, but the scale and technical footprint differ from independent, large‑scale third‑party refineries.
4. Where ambiguity and limits remain in public reporting
Public sources clearly show First Majestic performs metallurgical processing, produces doré, and operates a mint that produces .999 silver rounds [1] [2] [3], but the available material does not fully enumerate the exact throughput split between concentrates sold externally and metal refined internally, nor does it provide detailed technical specifications of every refining stage at each site. Company statements highlight efforts to reduce smelting/refining costs and to produce finished products for the market, while industry coverage and vendor sites corroborate in‑house minting, leaving room for interpretation about whether First Majestic refines every ounce it produces or strategically ships some concentrate for external smelting and refining when cost‑effective [1] [4] [9].
5. Bottom line — a qualified yes
First Majestic does refine its own silver to the extent that it operates processing plants that produce doré, and it owns a mint (First Mint) that further refines doré into .999+ bullion sold to customers [1] [2] [3]. However, the company continues to handle concentrates and internal shipments between mills and may still sell or externally refine portions of its production when economics or capacity dictate, so the picture is vertically integrated but not exclusively self‑contained for every production stream [1] [4].