The World’s Third Largest Gold Producer Restarts 30 Million Ounce Gold Project
South Africa’s AngloGold Ashanti, the world’s third-largest gold producer, restarted mining activities after a five-year suspension at its Oubasi mine site in Ghana.
Obuasi has 30 million ounces of gold resources and plans to mine them over the next two decades. AngloGold said that the output would gradually increase, and the mine is expected to produce an average of 2,000 tons of ore per day in 2020. By the end of 2021, this number will rise to an average of 4,000 tons per day. The ultimate goal is to produce an average of 350,000 to 400,000 ounces of gold annually over the first ten years of the mine’s resumption of operations.
The Obuasi mine has long-been competing with illegal miners and has been closed since 2014. Srinivasan Venkatakrishnan, then CEO, decided the company was no longer able to subsidize loss-making operations.
Since then, AngloGold has rebuilt the foundations of the mine for what it calls a “sustainable long-term future,” which is expected to cost between $495 million and $545 million between 2018 and the end of 2020.
The company said that the development of the underground part of the mine is still in progress, and as the mining of Obuasi deepens, there are plans to enter the KwesiRenner shaft by mid-2020. The construction of a new processing plant infrastructure will continue in 2020.
AngloGold acquired Ghana’s Ashanti Goldfields in 2004 and has since accelerated its expansion beyond South Africa, and today has mine operations on four continents. AngloGold Ashanti’s next challenge will be finding buyers for its last project in South Africa, Mponeng. The Mponeng mine is the deepest in the world. The sale of Mponeng means that the company will completely withdraw from South Africa. Prior to this, AngloGold had closed or sold other mines in South Africa to stop losses.
AngloGold may switch its main listing to London or New York. The company’s Chief Executive Officer, Kelvin Dushnisky, said, however, that the company plans to keep trading on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
