Congo produced about 2.84 million tons of copper last year, the country’s central bank reported. Peru’s output was 2.76 million tons, the Andean country’s mining and energy ministry said.

Congo has been reeling in Peru’s No. 2 copper spot over recent years, with flagging mining investment in Peru linked to red tape and recent political turmoil and protests. Chile remains the distant top producer of the red metal.

Peru, however, is hanging onto its lead over Congo on copper exports. Peru exported some 2.95 million tons of the metal last year, more than its annual production due to sales of stocks held over from previous years.

Rómulo Mucho, Peru’s minister of energy and mines, said in early March he expected copper production to increase to 3 million tons in 2024. The ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Peru’s Andes are home to major mining firms including Freeport-McMoRan, MMG, BHP, Glencore, Teck Resources, Japan’s Mitsubishi, and Southern Copper of Grupo México.

(By Marco Aquino and Felix Njini; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Richard Chang)

Newmont is working with Citigroup Inc. on the disposal and they have started sounding out prospective suitors, according to the people. Shandong Gold Mining Co. and Zijin Mining Group Co. are among companies showing early interest in the asset, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private.

Chifeng Jilong Gold Mining Co. is also studying Akyem, said the people. Australian miner Perseus Mining Ltd. said last month it would consider the asset as well.

Deliberations are at an early stage and suitors could decide not to proceed with bids, the people said. Representatives for Newmont, Citigroup, Shandong Gold and Zijin declined to comment. A spokesperson for Chifeng Jilong didn’t reply to a request for comment.

The sale of Akyem is part of Denver-based Newmont’s effort to raise $2 billion in cash through divestitures in the wake of its acquisition of Newcrest Mining Ltd. in November. On top of Akyem, Newmont wants to sell four gold mines in North America and one in Australia.

Akyem produced 420,000 ounces of gold a year at the end of 2022, the company’s website shows. The precious metal surged above $2,200 an ounce this week for the first time and it has rallied about 10% in a month.

(By Vinicy Chan)

On Thursday, an investor group led by Harry Lundin (Bromma Asset Management) and Rick Rule signed a binding agreement with the company for a $50 million debenture financing. The debentures will bear annual interest equal to the secured overnight financing rate (currently 5.3%) plus 4%, and are convertible into Lifezone’s common shares.

The nickel developer went public last July following a business combination between special purpose acquisition company – GoGreen Investments – and Lifezone Holdings Ltd. At the time, the combined entity was valued at $1 billion by the SPAC.

The New York-listed Lifezone pairs one of the world’s largest and highest-grade undeveloped nickel sulphide deposits in Kabanga with a proprietary processing technology, known as Hydromet, to produce cleaner metals in support of growing demand for batteries.

The company acquired the rights to the Kabanga project in early 2021, and in the same year, was awarded a mining licence by the Tanzanian government, a key partner on the project alongside BHP, which has committed financial backings of $100 million.

Kabanga’s previously owners include Barrick Gold and Glencore, which had spent $293 million on exploration prior to having their retention licence revoked in 2018.

Since taking over, Lifezone continued with drilling at Kabanga, leading to high-grade discoveries and a significant mineral resource update in late 2023. The deposit is now estimated to contain 881,000 tonnes of nickel metal within 43.6 million tonnes of measured and indicated resource grading 2.02% nickel. Another 391,000 tonnes (17.5 million tonnes at 2.23% nickel) are in the inferred resource category.

The company also made advancements in the metallurgical refining testwork using its Hydromet technology, which is said to have lower carbon footprint than the conventional pyrometallurgical smelting method. Test results showed nickel recoveries of over 98.5%.

Refinery licence

On the same day of the $50 million financing, Lifezone announced it has received a multi-metals processing licence from the government for its facility at Kahama, located approximately 340 km southwest of Kabanga.

The site, situated within a newly established special economic zone, stands to benefit from the legacy infrastructure of Barrick’s former Buzwagi gold mine nearby.

With the licence, the company will be able to produce finished metals in-country, potentially reducing capital and operating costs, as well as reducing costs associated with transport of concentrate or other intermediate products.

“With the receipt of our Kabanga special mining licence, and now the Kahama refinery licence, we have a clear path to delivering a direct-to-metal solution and enabling the production of nickel, copper and cobalt in Tanzania,” Lifezone CEO Chris Showalter said in a news release.

Shares of Lifezone Metals gained 3.2% to $8.19 by 10:00 a.m. Friday in New York, giving the company a market capitalization of $639.3 million.

International Resources Holding recently told EMR Capital that it is interested in bidding for the private equity manager’s 80% stake in the Lubambe copper project, which is up for sale, a development that may complicate a sale process that’s already underway, two of the sources said.

The IHC unit’s interest in Lubambe, with potential to be among Zambia’s largest copper mines, comes after Shanghai-listed JCHX, a mine servicing and contracting firm, entered into a deal to buy EMR’s 80% stake in Lubambe in January.

The sale process requires approval from the Zambian government, which is pending and unclear at the moment, one of the sources said.

The Zambian government owns a 20% stake in Lubambe through state-firm ZCCM-IH.

The IHC unit’s interest is spurred by an aggressive push by cash-rich oil majors United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to secure critical metal supply in Africa, as they bid to diversify their economies and engage with energy transition.

Middle East investors are pitted against Chinese companies in Africa, including state backed firms, also aggressively pursuing deals in Africa to strengthen China’s grip on minerals required to power a rapidly expanding domestic electric vehicle manufacturing sector.

EMR Capital’s binding deal agreed directly with JCHX technically precludes it from entertaining any new offers, one of the sources said. Still, EMR is aware that IRH is interested in buying the assets and that the UAE firm has officially informed the Zambian government and ZCCM-IH of its interest, two sources said.

While its interest is now widely known within the Zambian government circles, the UAE firm hasn’t presented a formal offer to EMR on the Lubambe stake, one source said.

EMR declined to comment. IRH and IHC didn’t immediately respond to emailed questions.

IRH has gatecrashed once before. It staged a last minute buyout of a 51% stake in Zambia’s Mopani Copper Mines last month, its first mining deal in Africa’s second-largest producer of the metal that is key to products from power lines and industrial machinery to electric vehicles.

The Abu Dhabi firm became the Zambian government’s preferred investor for Mopani mines ahead of Sibanye Stillwater and China’s Zijin Mining Group, which had been short listed for the assets after a protracted selection process.

Cashing out

EMR, which has owned the Lubambe mine since 2017, wants to exit the project as its funds mature, after Covid delayed its development, the sources said. It also sold a 51% stake in adjacent Mingomba copper project for a sizeable amount to California-based start up KoBold Metals.

EMR still holds a 28% stake Mingomba, alongside Zambia’s ZCCM.

Lubambe, previously owned by African Rainbow Minerals and Vale SA, produced about 15,000 tons of copper last year but needs to raise output to about 2,500 tons a month to become sustainable, it says on its website.

JCHX in January said it proposed to pay $1 for EMR’s 80% stake, and another $1 to take over the project’s $857 million debt.

JCHX did not respond to emailed questions.

Zambia’s ministry of mines did not immediately respond to emailed questions.

(By Felix Njini, Julian Luk, Clara Denina, Melanie Burton, Chris Mfula and Hadeel Al Sayegh; Editing by Veronica Brown and David Evans)

The company also said that it has so far not applied for lithium blocks on a nomination basis from the Indian government.

In June last year, Reuters reported that NMDC’s unit Legacy Iron Ore had signed a lithium exploration pact with Australia’s Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd.

NMDC shares were down 1.7% on Friday.

(By Neha Arora, Ashna Teresa Britto and Navamya Ganesh Acharya; Editing by Sonia Cheema)

The London-based company, which has a 6.54% stake in South African platinum group miner Sedibelo Resources, said that plummeting prices for platinum group metals (PGMs) has affected its bottom line.

Since the beginning of 2023, prices for palladium and rhodium, used mainly in the catalytic converters that clean exhaust fumes in vehicles, have dropped by 44% and 63% respectively. This collapse is attributed to inventory reductions and a sluggish global economy. 

While the decrease in platinum has been less significant, the overall decline in PGMs has had a severe impact on producers’ profits.

Gemfields said it had reduced the value of its Sedibelo investment, which will result in a write-down ranging between $4 million and $28 million. This would translate in a loss of $0.8 US cents per share for 2023, a significant change from 4.8 US cents in earnings per share of achieved in 2022. 

Headline loss per share, which includes Sedibelo Resources’ fair value loss, is likely to be 0.9 cents compared with the prior year’s headline earnings per share of 4.8 US cents.

When it comes to its core business, Gemfields saw revenue from its 75%-owned Kagem emerald mine in Zambia drop 40% to $89.9 million in 2023, from $148.6 million the previous year. Top-line revenue at its Montepuez ruby mine in Mozambique decreased by 9.2% to $151.4 million from $166.7 million in 2022.

“Production of premium rough gemstones has been weaker at both Kagem and Montepuez Rompared to 2022, and resulted in November 2023’s planned higher quality emerald auction being withdrawn from our schedule,” chief executive Sean Gilbertson said.

“We look forward to completing our first auction of the year later on today, with a commercial-quality emerald auction taking place in Jaipur, and our next higher-quality emerald and mixed-quality ruby auctions to take place in Q2,” Gilbertson added.

Gemfields’ luxury brand Fabergé also disappointed, recording revenue of $15.7 million, which is 11% lower than the $17.6 million it had in 2022, mainly due to softer demand for precious stones.

Australia’s Lucapa Diamond (ASX: LOM) has recovered a 203-carat diamond at its prolific Lulo mine in Angola, the fifth-largest ever found at the operation.

The diamond is also the third 100-carat-plus stone found at Lulo this year.

Lucapa said the high-quality, type IIa diamond was recovered during the processing of run-of-mine stockpiled ore and its recovery follows those of a 162 and a 116 carat diamonds on successive days last month.

The mine, which hosts the world’s highest dollar-per-carat alluvial diamonds, began commercial production in January 2015. Only a year later, it delivered the largest ever diamond recovered in Angola — a 404-carat white stone later named the “4th February Stone”.

Lucapa has a 40% stake in the Lulo mine. The rest is held by Angola’s national diamond company (Endiama) and Rosas & Petalas, a private entity.

Angola is the world’s fifth diamond producer by value and sixth by volume. Its industry, which began a century ago under Portuguese colonial rule, is successfully being liberalized.

The miner’s profit last year rose 14% to $195.1 million from $171 million in 2022, with revenue climbing 13% to $891.3 million from $788.4 million. 

Gold sales from Sukari in Egypt, the company’s only producing mine, totalled 456,625 ounces, up 4% from 438,638 in 2022. This as Centamin saw realized prices for the precious metal increase 8.6% to $1,948 per ounce from a previous $1,794 per ounce.

Bullion prices climbed 15% in 2023, ending at $2,078.4 an ounce, a record high year-end figure, according to data from the World Gold Council. The average 2023 price of $1,940.54 an ounce was 8% higher than the 2022 average, marking the metals’ best year since 2020.

“2023 was the third consecutive year that we have safely delivered on our production guidance, reflecting the operational improvements and flexibility from our three-year reinvestment plan,” chief executive Martin Horgan said.

The company cut its payout to shareholders to 2 US cents, down from 2.5 US cents it handed in 2022. This made a total payout of 4 cents, down 20% from 5 cents the previous year.

Improvements at Sukari

The executive said Centamin had “re-positioned” Sukari to achieve a consistent annual production of 500,000 ounces. He also anticipated a reduction in operational expenses following the establishment of solar power generation capabilities.

The company invested less than expected last year, with a $204 million total capital expenditure bill, below guidance of $272 million. It attributed the drop to cost savings, lower costs capitalization and changes to equipment rebuild schedules.

Centamin highlighted a grid connection project that it kicked off last year, thanks to recent upgrades to Egypt’s power distribution infrastructure. The completion of this project, which would be supplemented with the existing onsite solar power generation, is expected to cut $41 million a year just in diesel costs.

The plan would also help Centamin achieve its near-term decarbonization goals. It is targeting a reduction of 30% of its Scope 1 and 2 emissions, those hose incurred through mining operations and power consumption, respectively, by 2030.

The miner left its 2024 gold production guidance range of 470,000 to 500,000 ounces per annum unchanged.

The world’s No. 2 gold miner wants to continue exploring the region, it said, after its success at the Kibali gold mine in northeastern DRC. The mine yielded 343,000 ounces of gold in 2023, representing nearly 8.5% of the company’s output for the year.

“Kibali has transformed what was previously the disadvantaged northeast region of the country into a new economic frontier and a flourishing commercial hub,” Barrick CEO Mark Bristow said in a news release.

“Of our $5 billion investment in the DRC, more than half has been spent with local contractors and suppliers,” Bristow said.

Last year, Barrick announced it intended to search for additional copper deposits in Zambia and the DRC as part of its efforts to expand its presence in the African copper belt.

Zimplats did not say how many of the 8,000 permanent and contract jobs were targeted under the planned cuts.

The company, which swung to a rare $8.8 million loss in the six months to December 2023, from a $159.6 million profit previously, said it was “critically reviewing its business” amid declining metal prices.

“Regrettably, labour optimisation initiatives must be implemented urgently to secure the business, and the bulk of jobs in the company,” Zimplats said in a statement.

Southern African PGM miners, including Zimplats’ parent company Impala, Sibanye Stillwater and Anglo American Platinum, have scrambled to cut costs and thousands of jobs after profits slumped as metal prices plunged over the past year due to weak auto production and concerns about a global economic slowdown.

Zimbabwe’s other PGM mines, Unki mine, owned by Anglo American Platinum, and Mimosa, a joint venture between Impala and Sibanye Stillwater, are also implementing job cuts.

Mimosa has also halted its $100 million North Hill expansion project, while Impala, which announced a 10-year $1.8 billion expansion project at Zimplats in 2021, is deferring long term schemes such as sulphur abatement and renewable energy.

Tharisa Plc has delayed by a year the commissioning of its $361 million Karo platinum mine in Zimbabwe, which was scheduled for June 2024, due to the low metal prices.

(By Nelson Banya; Editing by Ros Russell)

The new per-share offer price of A$0.575 represents a 4.5% increase over its previous bid of A$0.55, which was turned down by OreCorp earlier in the year. However, the Perth, Australia-based gold miner has maintained its confidence in completing a deal, and earlier this month, it extended its previous offer to April 19.

Perseus currently holds 22.01% of OreCorp’s share capital, having increased its stake by another 2.11% immediately prior to the new offer. It is now the largest shareholder of OreCorp, just ahead of Silvercorp (21.11%).

In a news release confirming Perseus’ latest offer, OreCorp said it has notified Silvercorp of what is determined to be a “superior proposal” in accordance with the matching rights process set out in the bid implementation deed signed between the companies in December 2023.

Silvercorp, which initiated its takeover proposal in August 2023, now has a five business days to make a better offer.

Should Silvercorp fail to provide such an offer within the five-day period, the OreCorp board intends on recommending that shareholders accept the amended proposal in the absence of a superior proposal, the Australian gold developer said.

OreCorp also said it had received statements of intent from major shareholders, who in aggregate hold approximately 15.6% of its shares, indicating that they intended to accept the new proposal from Perseus.

At the heart of this takeover battle is the Nyanzaga project in Tanzania, located near Barrick Gold’s (TSX: ABX; NYSE: GOLD) Bulyanhulu mine and AngloGold Ashanti’s (JSE: ANG) (NYSE:AU) Geita mine.

A 2022 definitive feasibility study gave the project an after-tax net present value of $618 million at a 5% discount rate and an internal rate of return of 25%.

Geographically, Perseus is the closer suitor with three operating mines in West Africa producing gold at a rate of more than 535,000 ounces per year.

Silvercorp has two producing mines in China but has been looking to diversify its portfolio.

The diversified miner said in a statement no injuries were reported from the Feb. 29 incident when an ore collector bin attached to the shaft headgear collapsed to ground, damaging a surface ore conveyor belt system.

The damage to the ore collector bin and collapse of the conveyor system had resulted in the suspension of production from the shaft, Sibanye said.

Investigations into the cause of the incident were underway, while its impact on annual production from the Siphumelele shaft is being assessed, it added.

The shaft was forecast to produce an average of 54,000 platinum group metal ounces in 2024, approximately 3.5% of Sibanye’s annual output from its South African PGM mines.

(By Nelson Banya; Editing by Louise Heavens)

The gold producer, with operations in Mali, Guinea and Liberia, called Corica’s move “a clear breach of the mining contract” as it alleges the contractor “failed to meet mining contract volumes due to delays in mining equipment mobilization, commissioning, and overall operating performance”.

Hummingbird issued a notice to Corica on Monday, demanding the resumption of mining by the end of Tuesday. The company warned that if the contractor failed to do so, it might step in to resume mining operations, or work with alternative suppliers.

According to Corica, Hummingbird Resources owes it $27 million for work already completed. It noted the measure remains conditional and reversible provided the miner pays the pending invoices and provides a Deed of Company Guarantee by April 7.

“Corica has over two decades of history in contracting with major clients and is proud to have had zero litigation to this date,” it said in the statement.

Hummingbird issued late on Wednesday a response to Corica, disputing the accuracy of the amount owed and the need for payment.

“Since the inception of the contract in September 2022, Corica has consistently underperformed against established contractual performance targets, failing to meet the mining contract volumes principally due to delays in mobilizing mining equipment, commissioning the equipment, as well as recruitment and training,” Hummingbird said.

The miner argues it has been cooperating with Corica in good faith since July 2023, when it informed the contractor of a contract breach due to the operation’s underperformance.

Kouroussa, Hummingbird’s second operating mine, achieved first gold pour in June 2023 and it is expected to churn out an average of 120,000 to 140,000 ounces of gold for the first three years of commercial production. After that, Kouroussa would average 100,000 ounces of gold a year over an initial seven-year life. 

Hummingbird took on a $55 million loan with Coris Bank in September, pledging to cut $122.8 million in debt over three years starting with a $77 million debt repayment by the end of this year. 

The miner also raised $30 million mainly through a share placement at an average price of 11.26 pence per share with shareholders, including 45% shareholder CIG, an investment bank.

Hummingbird agreed at the time to hedge 30,000 ounces of gold, which represents about 15% of its total production. This decision was made amid soaring bullion prices, which hit a new all-time high of $2,195.15 per ounce on March 8.

The miner has faced challenges in bringing the Kouroussa mine up to full production. Aside the ongoing issues with Corica, activities at the mine were disrupted last year by rain and delays associated with skill development.

By Tuesday afternoon, stock in the Toronto-based company had fallen 29% since Friday to C$2.21 apiece, valuing Global Atomic at C$462.7 million. It was as low as C$2.03 on Tuesday and has traded in a 52-week range of C$1.28 to C$3.91.

Global Atomic plans to start Dasa’s $424.6 million construction after June and commission the mine by the end of next year, according an updated feasibility study this month. The military coup in July led the US to suspend government funding for Dasa, but the company raised C$15 million in January by selling stock and says it will pursue more financing in a 60% borrowing, 40% equity-raising model.

“With the situation in Niger being fluid, in addition to current advanced discussions with project lenders, the company is also pursuing other financing strategies to meet its project funding requirements,” president and CEO Stephen G. Roman said in a release on Monday. “Given strong third-party interest in Global Atomic’s high-grade uranium project and our plans for near-term production, there are many groups interested in funding the Dasa project.”

The spot price of uranium oxide, also called yellowcake, was $91 per lb. on Tuesday, down from $107 per lb. last month, but still at its highest level since 2007. The metal is at nearly double its year-ago price on rising demand for electricity production without the air pollution of fossil fuels, and a forecast supply deficit. China alone plans to build about 150 reactors over the next decade.

Shares in other uranium producers, such as Canada’s Cameco (TSX: CCO; NYSE: CCJ) and Kazakhstan’s Kazatomprom (LSE: KAP), the world’s largest, gained 2% on the Niger developments, but declined on Tuesday to near Friday’s close.

US bases

American troops have been in Niger to fight regional Islamic insurgents since a 2012 agreement. The West African country supplies about 5% of global uranium demand making it the seventh-largest producer, including about 20% of the European Union’s needs. Numerous junior and large companies are exploring in Niger. French-state owned Orano said last month it was restarting production that was suspended after the coup.

David Talbot, a uranium market expert and managing director of Toronto-based Red Cloud Securities, said that despite the uncertainty in Niger, the country has been a steady uranium producer for more than 50 years and the government has respected operations by foreign companies.

“Even with the recent removal of French troops from the country, Niger has respected Orano’s business and we would expect it to do the same with Global Atomic and others,” Talbot said in a note on Tuesday. “For now, the key catalyst for Global Atomic remains the closing of its project debt financing.”

The main shareholders in Global Atomic are Toronto-based Sprott Asset Management with nearly 8% through exchange-traded funds, and New York’s Global X ETFs and investment firm VanEck. The January stock fundraising included $5 million from Bermuda-based Regent Mercantile Holdings led by Stephen Dattels, who also has an interest in Pasofino Gold (TSXV: VEIN) and its Dugbe gold project in Liberia.

Global Atomic raised Dasa’s probable reserve by 50% to 73 million lb. uranium oxide in 8 million tonnes grading 4,113 parts per million uranium oxide, according to the new feasibility study. The company has signed offtake agreements for 1.3 million lb. of uranium a year from a plant expected to produce about 3 million lb. annually over a proposed 23-year mine life.

Sahel region

Western nations such as France, which has long stationed troops in its former colonies, have been trying to help countries in West Africa’s Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert stem the growth of Islamic insurgents over the past few decades. The US began its Africa Command in 2007. But recent coups, including in neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso, have hardened the resolve of some countries to lessen ties with the West and turn to Russia and its mercenary outfit Wagner Group for support.

In an alarming development for the US, Niger is considering a yellowcake supply deal with Iran, The Wall St. Journal reported on Sunday. The West has been trying to block Iran’s access for decades to nuclear material that could help it build an A-bomb.

The pivot prompted a US delegation including Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Molly Phee to visit Niger last week and press the regime under General Abdourahamane Tiani to organize elections, address security concerns and kill the Iran deal. But the Americans didn’t meet with Tiani. He issued a statement criticizing the condescending attitude of the visitors for not following protocol, denied there was a deal with Iran and cancelled the security arrangement with the US.

The US operates two bases there including one for drones built in 2021 for an estimated $100 million, according to Reuters. It remains unclear if all the 1,300 US soldiers in the country will have to leave.

Nuclear fuel

Besides countering Islamic insurgents, the West also wants to increase its uranium fuel processing. The US, Canada, Britain, France and Japan committed a total of $4.2 billion in December to build new plants since Russia’s Rosatom controls more than half the world’s capacity. Some Western nations are considering whether to sanction Rosatom and yellowcake exports to Russia.

For uranium investors, the price crash in battery metals nickel, lithium and cobalt may be a cautionary tale about the energy transition’s demand at this stage. Nuclear power has held out promise for decades but safety concerns, accidents and construction cost overruns have limited its appeal. The cure for high metal prices is high metal prices, The Economist noted last month.

But the Toronto-based Sprott Physical Uranium Trust (TSX: U.U for USD; U.UN for CAD), the largest investment fund in the physical metal, with $5.5 billion under management, remains boosterish while noting constraints in Niger.

“The situation in Niger is still developing, and Orano continues to face logistical challenges with both accessing the required reagents and exporting uranium,” Sprott exchange-traded fund project manager Jacob White said in blog-post on Monday. “Uranium’s recent pullback from the triple digits may be an attractive entry point in the overall uranium bull market.”

In a paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the UB scientists present a global atlas of unburnable oil. This map was designed with environmental and social criteria that warn which oil resources should not be exploited to meet the commitments of the Paris Agreement signed in 2015 to mitigate the effects of climate change.

The atlas reveals that to limit global warming to 1.5°C, it is essential to avoid the exploitation of oil resources in the most socio-environmentally sensitive areas of the planet, such as natural protected areas, priority areas for biodiversity conservation, areas of high endemic species richness, urban areas and the territories of Indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation.

It also warns that not extracting oil/coal resources in these vulnerable places would not be enough to keep global warming below 1.5°C as indicated in the Paris Agreement.

New roadmap

In this context, the unburnable oil atlas provides a new roadmap to complement the demands of international climate policy—based primarily on demand for fossil fuels—and to enhance socio-environmental safeguards in the exploitation of energy resources.

“Our study reveals which oil resources should be kept underground and not commercially exploited, with special attention to those deposits that overlap with areas of high endemic richness or coincide with outstanding socio-environmental values in different regions of the planet,” lead researcher Martí Orta-Martínez said in a media statement. “The results show that the exploitation of the selected resources and reserves is totally incompatible with the achievement of the Paris Agreement commitments.”

Orta-Martínez pointed out that there is now a broad consensus among the scientific community to limit global warming to 1.5°C to avoid reaching the tipping points of the earth’s climate system, such as melting permafrost, loss of Arctic sea ice and the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, and forest fires in boreal forests.

“If these thresholds are exceeded, this could lead to an abrupt release of carbon into the atmosphere – climate feedback – and amplify the effects of climate change and trigger a cascade of effects that commit the world to large-scale, irreversible changes,” he said.

Carbon budget nearly exhausted

To limit average global warming to 1.5°C, the total amount of CO2 emissions that must not be exceeded is known as the remaining carbon budget. In January 2023, the remaining carbon budget for the 50% chance of keeping warming to 1.5°C was about 250 gigatonnes of CO2 (GtCO2).

“This budget is steadily decreasing at current rates of human-induced emissions—about 42 GtCO2 per year—and will be completely used up by 2028,” Lorenzo Pellegrini, first author of the article, said.

Pellegrini noted that the combustion of the world’s known fossil fuel resources would result in the emission of about 10,000 GtCO2, 40 times more than the carbon budget of 1.5°C.

“In addition, the combustion of developed fossil fuel reserves – that is, those reserves of oil and gas fields and coal mines currently in production or under construction – will emit 936 GtCO2, four times more than the remaining carbon budget for a global warming of 1.5°C,” co-author Gorka Muñoa said. “The goal of no more than 1.5°C global warming requires a complete halt to exploration for new fossil fuel deposits, a halt to the licensing of new fossil fuel extraction, and the premature closure of a very significant share (75%) of oil, gas and coal extraction projects currently in production or already developed.”

With this prospect, the authors call for urgent action by governments, corporations, citizens and large investors such as pension funds to immediately halt any investment in the fossil fuel industry and infrastructure if socio-environmental criteria are not applied.

”Massive investment in clean energy sources is needed to secure global energy demand, enact and support suspensions and bans on fossil fuel exploration and extraction, and adhere to the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty,” the team concluded.

The loss was mainly due to lower gold sales, corporate restructuring costs, higher environmental provisions as well as costs of job cuts, care and maintenance at Córrego do Sítio in Brazil, which was idled last August.

It compares with a restated headline profit of $489 million the year before. AngloGold Ashanti, which also has operations in Africa and the Americas, restated its financial statements for 2022, which the company said “contained an error related to the reported amount of the deferred tax asset with regard to the Obuasi mine” in Ghana.

The miner said while it anticipated gold production at its Tropicana mine to be impacted during the first half of 2024, “any decrease is expected to be largely recovered in the second half”.

“Consequently, the company does not believe that this event will have an impact on its gold production and cost guidance provided in February 2024, which guidance is therefore maintained,” AngloGold Ashanti said.

Tropicana, which is 70% owned by AngloGold Ashanti and contributed 310,000 ounces or 12% of the group’s total 2023 output, was impacted this month by heavy rains and flooding.

Mining operations have been restricted due to the flooding, while the processing plant is treating stockpiled ore at a reduced throughput rate, AngloGold Ashanti said in a statement.

(By Nelson Banya; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

Refineries vetted by the LBMA still source gold from “questionable suppliers and mines” and are not tackling “serious human rights violations and environmental degradation,” a collection of eight organizations that analyze mining, led by Swissaid, said in a letter to the LBMA, seen by Reuters.

In an emailed statement in response to questions, the LBMA said it looked forward to discussing various proposals at an event in London later this week.

The LBMA, which governs access to the world’s largest bullion market, has, in common with other organizations, established initiatives to try to prevent problematic gold from passing through the LBMA’s refiners and into the vaults of banks.

One of these is the LBMA’s Good Delivery List (GDL), which catalogues refiners the body considers responsible sources of gold because of the due diligence systems they have in place.

Once accepted into a vault as Good Delivery, gold can be freely traded between players on the gold market.

The NGOs said that there had been “some slight improvements” in the LBMA’s systems since 2021, but that “many” refiners on list have, in recent years, sourced gold from suppliers linked to money laundering, land and water pollution, or human rights abuses.

This, in turn, allows problematic gold to enter the global market.

The letter cited cases that had been exposed by media or researchers across countries in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East but did not name any of the refiners.

“The LBMA has a key role to play in setting standards for the industry and holding its members accountable,” the groups said in their letter.

Refiners do not engage enough with the communities where the gold they process comes from, the groups said. The voluntary nature of the guidance on what information refiners publish leads to a lack of transparency over the origins of gold.

The letter cited the example of the United Arab Emirates being named in a 2023 report as the country of origin of nearly 150 metric tons of gold sold to GDL refiners in 2021. The UAE does not mine any gold but it has established itself as a hub for gold from all over the world.

“The origin of this gold is not the UAE, it was merely transited through this country,” the letter said, calling for refineries to report the origins of gold publicly.

The LBMA said it would address specific concerns brought up by the groups after a summit on the responsible sourcing of minerals this week.

(By Reade Levinson and David Lewis; Editing by Barbara Lewis)

Launched Monday, the Barrick Academy is designed to offer tailor-made training programs aimed at developing the miner’s frontline managers to grow as leaders in their fields, while equipping them with the skills to manage their teams more effectively and to improve performance.

The Barrick Academy will be training more than 2,000 foremen, supervisors and superintendents from the Africa and Middle East region in the next 24 months.

Barrick said the Academy would also gear up to include contractors and expand the curriculum to cover wider disciplines, including financial leadership, advanced computer literacy and safety courses.

The opening follows the construction of an airport terminal at Buzwagi’s Kahama airstrip in January, which has paved the way for a scheduled airline service that can serve more than 200 passengers at a time, Barrick said, adding that it is expected to be a major catalyst for economic growth in the region.

According to Barrick’s chief operating officer for the Africa and Middle East region, Sebastiaan Bock, the airport terminal and Academy form part of Barrick’s plan to turn Buzwagi into a Special Economic Zone (SEZ).

A feasibility study commissioned in 2021 showed that the creation of the SEZ had the potential to replace the mine as the region’s economic driver and could sustainably create 3,000 jobs annually, generate more than $150,000 each year from service levies for the local municipality and deliver approximately $4.5 million in employment taxes a year.

The government of Tanzania approved the conversion of the mine into a SEZ through a government notice that was issued in February this year. A number of investors have started the process of setting up manufacturing industries inside this area.

“How we close our mines is just as important to us as how we build and operate them,” Bock said in the statement.

“Our Buzwagi mine was a significant economic powerhouse in the region for nearly 15 years before it poured its last gold in 2021. From our perspective, however, that is not the end of the story for Buzwagi as we transform it into an alternative productive asset that will serve the community.”

Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd.’s Zimbabwean unit is offering staff voluntary redundancy packages to cut costs because of anemic metal prices.

Weak platinum group metal prices are projected to last for the next 12 to 18 months, Zimplats Holdings Ltd. chief executive officer Alex Mhembere said in a staff circular dated March 18 that was confirmed by the company. The producer is beginning “a voluntary retrenchment exercise for all employees wishing to be considered,” which may “mitigate the need for a compulsory retrenchment,” the circular said.

Impala, known as Implats, and its PGM mining peers have already cut thousands of jobs in neighboring South Africa – which accounts for about 70% of global platinum output. The four largest producers have all recently released sobering earnings reports, with profits battered by a sharp slump in metals prices since the start of last year.

Employees at Zimplats – Zimbabwe’s biggest producer of PGMs – are being offered a minimum of three months’ pay and must submit their application forms by March 22, according to the circular.

“We have been working with all teams across the board in implementing various cost containment and cash preservation programs,” Mhembere said. “I am confident that as a team we will successfully navigate through the headwinds.”

(By Godfrey Marawanyika)

“We are ready now for carmakers to begin to gear up,” Trade and Industry Minister Ebrahim Patel told reporters. “A carmaker can commence immediately to put in place the production capabilities and production systems,” he said Monday on the sidelines of a Black Industrialists and Exporters Conference in the capital, Pretoria.

South Africa, in an effort to preserve a key export industry, last month announced a 150% tax deduction on investments in the local production of electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles from March 2026.

The country’s vehicle exports generated more than $21 billion in earnings last year. But car companies were worried about the lack of government support for EVs, amid shrinking demand for conventional petrol and diesel-powered engines in Europe, South Africa’s primary export market.

Patel said the long lead time was designed to give South African carmakers enough time to prepare production facilities and win support from their parent companies.

“As they incur that expense off the back of our incentive, they know they will be reimbursed,” he said.

The tax break is key for South Africa, which despite its natural advantages, has done little to develop an EV industry in the country.

South Africa has abundant supplies of raw materials vital for the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries, including increasing supplies of nickel and the world’s largest reserves of manganese. it also holds the world’s largest platinum reserves, a metal used in fuel-cell engines that run on hydrogen.

(By Mpho Hlakudi)

Thungela, which ships thermal coal burned in power stations, bought the Ensham mine as part of a strategy to shift its sources away from home, where companies are struggling to export the fuel due to insufficient rail capacity.

While it wants to extract maximum value from the new mine, Thungela, which was spun out of Anglo American in 2021, also wants to purchase more coal assets, CEO July Ndlovu said.

“We are looking for the right quality assets, assets that are fairly priced, that we can add value but we also have to be diligent in terms of what we look for,” Ndlovu told a media conference.

The Johannesburg-based miner said on Monday its net profit slumped 73% to 4.97 billion rand ($264.81 million) in the year ended December 2023 from about 18 billion rand the previous year due to lower coal prices and persistent rail constraints in South Africa.

It proposed a $27 million share buy back and declared a 10 rand per share final dividend. Thungela’s shares were up 5.11% at 1002 GMT, with the broader JSE All Share index down 0.18%.

The Ensham mine is forecast to ramp up output to about 4 million tons by 2026 from 2.9 million tons last year. This could help Thungela raise group output to about 15 million tons, even as some mines in South Africa gradually run out of commercially viable ore, Ndlovu said.

Thungela said output from South Africa is forecast to stay steady at around 11 million tons due to the expiry of some mines. The company shipped about 15 million tons of the fuel in 2021, but its South African output is not expected to rise again to those levels, Ndlovu said.

($1 = 18.7679 rand)

(By Nelson Banya and Felix Njini; Editing by Louise Heavens, Kirsten Donovan and Miral Fahmy)

The company said the volume of diamonds with a viable chance of economic extraction at Lulo increased to 228,000 carats as of December 31, up from 153,870 carats the previous year. The newly identified resources, it said, could add an extra eight years to the deposit’s production.

Lucapa noted the updated figures are the result of an independent asset evaluation conducted by South Africa’s Z Star Mineral Resource Consultants.

The study assessed the resources at $1,897 per carat, a 5% decrease from $2,000 in December 2022, which partly reflects the decline of diamond prices last year. Diamond grades also decreased, but slightly — to 4.55 carats per 10 cubic meters. 

Lucapa recovered 181,900 precious stones in 2023, a 45% increase from the previous year, with an average rough size of 1.26 carats per stone compared to 1.23 carats in 2022.

This increase represents the sixth consecutive year of resources growth at Lulo, the company said. Total production from Lulo to date has reached 200,000 carats, generating $426 million at an average price of $2,122 per carat.

The Lulo mine, in operations since 2015,  is considered the world’s highest dollar-per-carat alluvial diamonds operation.

Lucapa has a 40% interest and the rest is held by Angola’s national diamond company (Endiama) and Rosas & Petalas, a private entity.

Angola is the world’s fifth diamond producer by value and sixth by volume. Its industry, which began a century ago under Portuguese colonial rule, is successfully lessening government regulations and restrictions in favour of a greater participation by private entities.

Lucapa’s shares closed at A$0.12 on Monday in Sydney, leaving the diamond miner with a market capitalization of A$33.25 million (about $22 million).

Since last month, the M23, a rebel group that Congo says is backed by neighboring Rwanda, has blocked trade routes to the city of Goma and is helping to smuggle tantalum from some of the country’s richest deposits, according to Congolese government and military officials and United Nations experts.

“They’re taking it to Rwanda,” likely through Virunga National Park, Lt. Col. Guillaume Ndjike Kaiko, a regional spokesperson for Congo’s military, said in an interview in Goma, the lakeside capital of North Kivu province that borders Rwanda. Rwanda’s government denies the accusations.

Tantalum is on a list of mineral resources that have raised international red flags for helping to fund years of conflict in Congo. For over a decade, industry groups that include companies like Intel Corp. and Apple Inc. have made efforts to ensure their mineral supply chains are conflict-free.

However, the renewed M23 offensive, focused on North Kivu, has left more than a million people in squalid camps and is tainting the region’s mineral output. Last week, the Responsible Minerals Initiative, which helps more than 400 of the world’s biggest corporations avoid purchasing metals that fuel or fund violence, warned its members about sourcing metal from the region in letters seen by Bloomberg.

The US and European Union have laws discouraging companies from purchasing minerals linked to the conflict. Virginia-based RMI did not respond to an email requesting comment.

“The falsehood that Rwanda is somehow involved in enabling smuggling provides cover to the DRC government who have abjectly failed to implement any meaningful ethical standards in their own mineral supply chain, to the benefit of many foreign powers,” government spokesperson Yolande Makolo said in a text message.

Congo and Rwanda were the world’s top two sources of tantalum in 2023, according to US Geological Survey estimates.

Congolese government data show North Kivu accounted for about half the country’s supply to the world in 2022. The province’s exports dropped 59% last year as the M23 advanced and an ownership dispute erupted over the country’s largest mine, Rubaya, according to a provincial mining report seen by Bloomberg.

Decades of conflict

The current fighting in North Kivu has its roots in the mid-90s when the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda spread across the border. Rwanda and the M23 say Congo’s government still protects militias with links to that violence, which killed an estimated 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The M23 is mainly led by Tutsis from Congo.

More than 100 armed groups are now active in the region, clashing over land, economic and political access and ethnic grievances.

Most mining at Rubaya and nearby tantalum sites is done by hand and is currently overseen by a loose coalition of armed groups known as Wazalendo, allied with Congo’s army, according to a United Nations experts’ report. However, the output now ends up in areas controlled by the rebels they’re fighting, Congolese officials say.

The M23 had limited involvement in the mineral trade when it launched its most recent rebellion in late 2021. That seems to have changed since the beginning of the year as the group encircled Goma — North Kivu’s main trading hub.

Official tantalum shipments from the province almost entirely stopped after M23 moved south and took control of the town of Shasha last month, cutting off the last main transport route to Goma from the Rubaya area, according to Ndjike and provincial mining statistics.

For Congo, the costs of the spiraling violence are massive. As locals flee their towns and villages for safety in displacement camps, aid groups say responding to the crisis will cost billions of dollars.

“The objective here is minerals, it’s to get the minerals that are found in our zone of responsibility,” Ndjike said of the current wave of fighting. “And it has an impact that’s not only economic but also humanitarian.”

(By Michael J. Kavanagh)

Copper has surged 5% this week, ending a months-long spell of inertia, as investors hone in on risks to supply at mines and smelters. Tentatively, traders are also warming to the idea that the worst of a global downturn is in the past, particularly for metals like copper that are increasingly used in electric vehicles and renewables.

But signs of the headwinds in traditional industrial sectors are still plain to see in the iron ore market, where futures fell below $100 a ton for the first time in seven months on Friday. Investors are betting that China’s years-long property crisis will run through 2024, keeping a lid on demand.

The steelmaking ingredient has shed more than 30% since early January as hopes of a meaningful revival in construction activity faded. Loss-making steel mills are buying less ore, and stockpiles are piling up at Chinese ports.

[Click here for an interactive chart of copper prices]

Sentiment has soured since the recent National People’s Congress in Beijing, where policymakers set an ambitious 5% goal for economic growth, but offered few new measures that would boost infrastructure or other construction-intensive sectors. The latest drop will embolden those who believe that the effects of President Xi Jinping’s property crackdown still have significant room to run, and that last year’s rally in iron ore may have been a false dawn.

On Friday there were fresh signs that weakness in China’s industrial economy is hitting the copper market too, with stockpiles tracked by the Shanghai Futures Exchange surging to the highest level since the early days of the pandemic. The hope is that headwinds in traditional industrial areas will be offset by an ongoing surge in usage in electric vehicles and renewables.

Further afield, industrial conditions in Europe and the US still look soft, but there’s growing optimism about copper usage in India, where rising investment has helped fuel blowout growth rates of more than 8% — making it the fastest-growing major economy.

For now, the main catalyst fueling copper’s rally is an unexpected tightening in global mine supplies. That’s been driven mainly by last year’s closure of a giant mine in Panama, but there are also growing worries about output in Zambia, which is facing an El Niño-induced power crisis.

Prices spiked on huge volumes on Wednesday after smelters in China held a crisis meeting on how to cope with a sharp drop in processing fees following disruptions to supplies of mined ore. The group stopped short of coordinated production cuts, but pledged to re-arrange maintenance work, reduce runs and delay the startup of new projects.

In the coming weeks investors will be watching Shanghai exchange inventories closely to gauge both the strength of demand and the extent of any capacity curtailments.

“The increase in SHFE stockpiles has been bigger than we’d anticipated, but we expect to see them coming down over the next few weeks,” Colin Hamilton, managing director for commodities research at BMO Capital Markets, said by phone. “If the pace of the inventory builds doesn’t start to slow, investors will start to question whether smelters are actually cutting and whether the impact of weak construction activity is starting to weigh more heavily on the market.”

Copper jumped as much as 2% to $9,066.50 a ton on the London Metal Exchange on Friday, and was trading at $9,030 a ton as of 2:13 p.m. local time. Other metals were mixed, with aluminum gaining 0.6% and lead dropping 1.8%.

Iron ore futures in Singapore held below the key $100 level, trading at $98 a ton.

(By Mark Burton)

President Felix Tshisekedi had sought to re-negotiate the terms of the joint venture to bring more benefits for Congo, the world’s biggest cobalt producer.

Under the revised deal, both parties have agreed that China will invest up to $7 billion in infrastructure projects in the central African country, up from $3 billion in the original agreement.

They have also agreed Chinese partners, including Sinohydro and China Railway group, will pay 1.2% of royalties annually to Congo while maintaining the same shareholding structure.

“Today, at the end of several months of negotiations, we reached this advent,” Minister Muvunyi said at the signing ceremony in the capital Kinshasa

Congo is also the world’s third-largest copper producer and holds significant deposits of lithium, tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold.

(By Benoit Nyemba and Sofia Christensen)

Coronavirus pandemic fallout and Moscow’s war in Ukraine have sent Western governments scrambling to reduce their reliance on Chinese supply chains and disentangle their economies from Russia.

But as Washington plots a course for its energy transition it is lagging behind China, which has spent the past decade securing access to minerals needed for the production of products like electric vehicle batteries and solar panels.

“We don’t want to be overly reliant on any one country or any one company for global supply chains for critical minerals,” Adeyemo told Reuters during a visit to a platinum mine in Marikana, South Africa, owned by Sibanye-Stillwater.

While the US government has launched a raft of measures to incentivize increased production of strategic and critical minerals at home, notably under the Inflation Reduction Act, Adeyemo acknowledged that overseas resources were also vital.

“Africa is going to play a huge role,” he said. “A lot of critical minerals are located here.”

Chinese assets in Africa already include massive copper and cobalt projects in Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia as well as lithium in Zimbabwe, where companies are assisted by heavy Chinese state investment in accompanying infrastructure.

Adeyemo said the United States was working with G7 allies to close that infrastructure gap.

The US International Development Finance Corporation is, meanwhile, aiming to de-risk private investment in Africa. And the deputy secretary said Washington was incentivizing US manufacturing to boost demand for those minerals and create favourable market conditions for miners.

But he added that the White House also stood ready to ensure a level playing field.

“We are talking to our European allies … about some of the actions we can take using trade tools to make sure that a country like China can’t flood the market with things like electric vehicles and solar panels,” he said.

Hold accountable

Regarding Russia, Adeyemo said countries like South Africa also had a role to play.

In the wake of Moscow’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the US government slapped sanctions on a number of Russian miners and mineral exports. But it left Russian platinum group metals (PGM) largely untouched.

The United States is a major consumer of palladium, a PGM used in catalytic converters, with 32% of its imports of the metal coming from Russia between 2019 and 2022, according to the US Geological Survey.

“South Africa has a real opportunity to help supply the global economy,” Adeyemo said. “And it gives us the ability to take other actions to hold Russia accountable.”

South Africa is a major palladium producer, and Sibanye-Stillwater mines the metal both in Marikana and at a US project in Montana.

“Between what comes out of South Africa and what’s produced in the US, the US does not need to be dependent on sources from any other country,” CEO Neal Froneman told Reuters.

However, he said companies like his needed US government support.

“You can provide loans or introduce tariffs or whatever it might be,” he said. “That is a role that they need to think very differently about and help companies that are trying to source and provide these critical metals into those ecosystems.”

(By Joe Bavier; Editing by Mark Potter)

Exxaro’s shares were up 5.19% at 0910 GMT after the miner declared a special dividend of 5.72 rand per share, in addition to a 10.10 rand per share payout.

It earlier reported that logistics constraints and softer coal prices contributed to a 22% dip in Exxaro’s headline earnings to 11.33 billion rand ($609.19 million) last year. Exxaro had about 14.8 billion rand in net cash at the end of last year.

The Johannesburg-based company, which also has interests in iron ore and renewable energy, wants to acquire assets in copper and manganese to take advantage of the global shift from fossil fuels toward cleaner energy.

“We are actively looking. We’re in the market, but we’re not desperate,” Tsengwa told Reuters.

She declined to say if the company had begun any negotiations.

Exxaro was among investors that wanted to buy Khoemacau copper mine in Botswana but were eventually outbid by China’s MMG, which paid about $1.9 billion for the assets.

“There’s nothing that passes us by, there’s nothing we do not know that is out there on the market,” Tsengwa said. “You know, people do talk to us because they know we’re interested.”

Exxaro is weighing a number of opportunities, chief growth officer Richard Lilleike said.

Along with rivals, such as Thungela Resources, Exxaro is battling a profit squeeze from challenges in the South African market, including lack of sufficient rail capacity to move coal to ports for export.

($1 = 18.5986 rand)

(By Nelson Banya and Felix Njini; Editing by Jacqueline Wong, David Goodman and Tomasz Janowski)

(By Saliou Samb and Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Chris Reese)

Net proceeds of the private placement will be used to advance the 100%-owned Koné gold project which is nearing a construction decision in Côte d’Ivoire. A portion of the proceeds will be used to explore nearby targets and for working capital and general corporate purposes.

“We are very pleased with the strong investor demand received for our upsized non-brokered private placement, led by a significant investment from the Lundin family along with notable investments from directors and officers of Montage,” Montage CEO Martino De Ciccio said in a news release.

“We look forward to progressing our strategy of building a premier multi-asset African gold producer, with our Koné project at the forefront.”

The nearest major centre to the Koné project is Séguéla 80 km to the south. A feasibility study was released earlier this year that outlines a mine with a 16-year life producing 378,000 oz. annually during the first three years. The all-in sustaining cost during those years will be $899/oz., rising to $998/oz. over the life of the mine.

The project has an after-tax net present value at a 5% discount of $1.09 billion and a 31% internal rate of return using a gold price of $1,850 per ounce. Pre-production capital costs will be $712.1 million, with after-tax payback achieved in 2.6 years.

The project has total probable reserves of 11.3 million oxide tonnes grading 0.63 g/t gold, 7.9 million transition tonnes at 0.63 g/t gold, and 155.1 million fresh tonnes at 0.73 g/t gold.

Including the probable reserves, the Koné deposit has an indicated resource, using a cut-off of 0.20 g/t gold, of 229 million tonnes grading 0.59 g/t gold and containing 4.4 million ounces. The indicated resource for the Gbongogo Main deposit, using a cut-off of 0.5 g/t gold, is 11 million tonnes grading 1.5 g/t and containing 520,000 ounces.

Together, the indicated resource contains almost 4.9 million oz. of gold. There is also an inferred resource for Koné of 25 million tonnes grading 0.5 g/t and containing 400,000 oz. of gold.

Ore will be mined from three pits for the Koné and Gbongogo Main deposits. The processing plant will have an annual throughput of 11 million tonnes and feature two parallel high-pressure grinding rolls followed by ball mills. The slurry will be thickened and pass through a carbon-in-pulp circuit, followed by elution, electrowinning and gold smelting.

Syrah’s largest shareholder and the country’s top pension fund AustralianSuper have agreed to the conversion of a 5-year unsecured convertible note issued in June 2019 and December 2023 into fresh shares in the miner, it said in a statement.

AustralianSuper had committed to subscribing for all shares under the placement and taking up its full pro-rata entitlement in the institutional entitlement offer, the company said.

The placement would be at a fixed price of A$0.55 per new share, which represented a discount of 19.1% to stock’s last closing price on March 12.

The company said it had agreed with AustralianSuper to the conversion of series 1 and 3 notes into new shares at a revised conversion price of A$0.6688 per share.

The company added that AustralianSuper’s shareholding would increase to no more than 31.9% post the completion of funding round, from around 17.8% earlier.

Around 178.2 million new shares would be issued under the placement and entitlement offer, Syrah said.

($1 = 1.5140 Australian dollars)

(By Roshan Thomas; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Rashmi Aich)

An Islamist insurgency in the Sahel, a semi-arid region stretching across the continent from Senegal to Sudan, has hit hard in Burkina Faso, which also suffered two military coups in 2022. The country — ruled by Captain Ibrahim Traore for the past 18 months — accounted for almost a quarter of people killed in terrorist attacks globally last year, according to Sydney-based Institute for Economics & Peace.

Six mining companies closed down in 2022, while one more ceased activity last year. Output of the precious metal fell 1.5% to 57.3 tons in 2023, the Ministry of Mines, Quarries and Energy said.

“2023 was a very difficult year in terms of security, with mixed economic and social consequences,” Brahim Kéré, director of forecasting and macroeconomic analysis at the ministry said in an interview. “In the gold sector, terrorist attacks have resulted in the closure of certain sites and difficulties in supplying certain mines with fuel and other materials.”

Burkina Faso last year revised its mining code to enable it receive more in royalties during boom times. The country, also suspended mineral exports by small-scale miners last month.

The companies still operating in the country include West African Resources Ltd., Endeavour Mining Plc and Iamgold Corp.

(By Tanga Kafando)

Infill drilling over 84 holes for 22,470 metres in the southern part of the deposit produced better-than-expected results across Abore’s 1.6-km strike length, the company said after North American markets closed Monday. They’re among the best ever at Asanko, it said.

Highlights include four holes over 120 metres of strike length: hole ABPC23-224 cut 45 metres grading 12.4 grams gold per tonne from 191 metres depth; hole ABPC23-226 intercepted 37 metres at 10.6 grams from 199 metres; hole ABPC23-239 returned 54 metres at 3.3 grams from 207 metres; and hole ABPC23-228 cut 41 metres grading 3.3 grams from 191 metres depth.

The new zone will help Galiano convert inferred resources below the pit shell to the indicated category and evaluate the potential to expand the pit. The company plans to update Abore resource and reserve estimates and provide 2024 production and cost guidance after drilling is completed in April.

“The results of this program are expected to affect the size and geometry of the Abore reserve pit,” Matt Badylak, Galiano’s president and CEO, said in a release. “The impact this will have on mineral reserves and ore delivery in 2024 is currently being evaluated through pit optimization and redesign.”

Raj Ray, a mining analyst at BMO Capital Markets, called Galiano’s drill report a “slight positive” in a note published early on Tuesday.

Double output

Abore has 12.8 measured and indicated tonnes grading 1.2 grams for 477,000 oz. contained metal and 3.6 inferred tonnes at 1.2 grams for 131,000 oz. gold, according to a 2022 feasibility study. The report envisioned extending Asanko by 8.5 years and more than doubling last year’s output of 134,000 oz. to 250,000 oz. starting next year.

Asanko has four main open-pit mining areas – Abore, Miradani North, Nkran and Esaase. Gold Fields said last year it’s considering selling its share of the asset, the company’s smallest in Ghana.

Galliano is drilling more to determine the extent of the new mineralization. The zone is mainly in Abore’s granite and is characterized by significant hydrothermal alteration and high-density quartz veining, the company said. It is open along strike in both directions and is untested at depth.

The drill program also found more mineralization across Abore. Hole ABPC23-246 cut 18 metres grading 8.2 grams from 172 metres; hole ABPC23-259 returned 24 metres at 5.4 grams from 263 metres; and hole ABPC23-223 cut 27 metres at 4.2 grams from 246 metres.

Abore is located directly on the mine’s haul road about 13 km north of the site’s processing plant. The deposit sits along the Esaase shear corridor, which also hosts the Esaase deposit, and forms part of the northeast striking Asankrangwa gold belt.

“These excellent results demonstrate that Abore has significant upside potential beyond the current reserves,” Chris Pettman, Galiano’s vice-president of exploration, said in the release. “Seeing significant intervals of high-grade gold along the entire 1,600 metre strike length of the deposit, and the discovery of the new high-grade south zone, gives us confidence that Abore will continue to grow.”

Galiano shares traded down around 3% at $1.15 apiece on Tuesday morning in New York for a $259 million market cap. The stock has traded in a 12-month range of $0.48 and $1.19.

The Porgera mine in the hills of the Pacific island country was under care and maintenance from April 2020 to December 2023 while Barrick and partner Zijin Mining renegotiated terms with the government. Hiring is going better than envisioned and the mine will ramp up this year, Bristow said in an exclusive interview with The Northern Miner last week.

“We poured our first bar of gold under the new company – we don’t make too much fuss about it,” Bristow said with a laugh in the Barrick headquarters in Toronto before turning more serious. “We’ve got some work to do re-erecting the power towers after people blew them up.”

Tribal conflicts and protests have downed power lines several times since Porgera started production in 1990 under Canada’s Placer Dome which Barrick acquired in 2006 and may continue even with the new agreement. Assaults on illegal miners and toxic waste claims dogged the operation, like at the Acacia mine in Tanzania.

But Bristow, who’s led the company since it merged in 2019 with the South African company he built, Randgold Resources, transformed Acacia after what he called “a great deal for a crippled organization.”

Barrick had 72% of Acacia but no management control when authorities shut it down forcing the company to take it private and renegotiate operations over several years. At the giant Reko Diq copper project in Pakistan, it took a decade to resolve arbitration in Barrick’s favour, and four years to sort out Papua New Guinea’s nationalization of Porgera.

Reko Diq

Now, Porgera has an ownership structure where locals control more than half the company and its profit, similar to how Barrick is developing Reko Diq with half split evenly between the central government and Baluchistan state, leaving Barrick with half. Operating in locations deemed risky is about building partnerships because without permissions, the mines shut, Bristow says.

“It’s all about licence to operate,” he said. “Mining rights are binary. You either have a mine or you don’t. You can’t sort of say ‘I’m in a tough jurisdiction, so I’m going to discount it by 20%.’ I mean, there’s no such thing.”

All gold miners have benefited from the metal achieving record prices this month – $2,177.10 per oz. on Monday – which Bristow ascribed to global risks such as slackening economic growth and rising geopolitical tensions.

But Barrick’s gold and copper production fell slightly in 2023. The company has had to contend with an 18-month delay to permits at the Goldrush project, part of its Nevada Gold Mines partnership with Newmont (NYSE: NEM; TSX: NGT), and a slow start to commissioning at the Pueblo Viejo mine expansion in the Dominican Republic.

Reported talks to acquire the shut Cobre Panama copper mine in Central America from First Quantum Minerals (TSX: FM), which Bristow again denied, saw no deal even though it would have suited the CEO’s penchant for expanding more into the energy transition metal and turning around troubled assets. Especially ones marred by poor relations with governments.

Site visits

Bristow, a hands-on CEO, visits each of the company’s roughly 20 sites at least three times a year, with the fourth round reserved for those that need attention or new initiatives.

“I don’t believe in offices,” the South African native said. “For mining to be successful and agile, the mine management should own their businesses. That calls for a better quality general manager on the mines and we look to more CEO-style people.”

Bristow has long stated his aversion to paying a premium for projects. Between China increasing its reach in the world economy more aggressively from about 2005, through a 2011 gold price peak and fall until it started rising again in 2019, the CEO figures the industry had to write off almost US$80 billion in value because of deals often sweetened with cash on top of premiums.

“There are moments when you will pay a premium, it depends how the market values the asset,” he said. “When you pay premiums on premiums, you’ve got to rely on the gold price to get yourself into the money. I’ve never done that.”

Bristow’s Randgold Resources brought African assets into the merger with Barrick, including the Loulo and Gounkoto mines in western Mali, Tongon in Ivory Coast and Kibali in the Democratic Republic of Congo where it doubled the gold reserve within two years to 10 million ounces. Kibali, Africa’s largest gold mine, still has 10 million oz. in reserves more than a decade after starting production.

Greenfields expansion

This year, Barrick is focused on Nevada, where the company is increasing greenfields exploration spending to replicate discoveries like Fourmile and Goldrush with a 20-million-oz. find that could boost Barrick’s gold production. It was 4.1 million oz. last year.

At Goldrush underground, where permits at last arrived in December, crews are preparing to install ventilation ducts allowing annual output to increase to 400,000 oz. by 2028 from 130,000 oz. this year, the CEO said. Permit delays had affected cash flow, he said.

While mining in the U.S. might be considered less risky than say, the remote northeast DRC home of Kibali, America has its own hazards, such as litigation by anti-mining groups and lengthy permits processes. During the pandemic, when many states suffered lack of revenue for services, Barrick and Newmont stepped up to pay their taxes in Nevada ahead of time.

“No matter how you own it, a mine is actually is a national asset,” he said. “When you invest in it to develop it, you should be investing in its people and its businesses, and people should benefit out of it and the economic benefits should be split. It should be shared.”

There are no public election opinion polls in Senegal, but the coalition’s candidate, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, is seen as a strong contender among the 19 candidates vying for the presidency in the March 24 vote.

If he is elected, the coalition’s plans could have significant implications for the eight-nation West African Economic and Monetary Union and for Senegal’s plans to become an oil producer later this year.

“Convinced that full independence cannot be achieved without controlling the economy, livestock management, fisheries and agriculture, we are fully committed to achieving food, digital, fiscal, energy and scientific sovereignty,” Faye said in an introduction to the 84-page platform document.

Members of Sonko’s dissolved Pastef party and other parties formed a coalition and picked Faye as a candidate in November after Sonko was disqualified over a defamation conviction.

Sonko has called on his supporters to back Faye – a concern for competitors since Sonko enjoys widespread support, particularly among young people frustrated with economic hardships and a lack of jobs in the country of 17 million.

The coalition’s platform lays out proposals it says will tackle inequalities and boost employment, but it also plans significant governance shake-ups including the creation of a vice-president role and the abolition of the prime minister’s position.

Its proposals that might particularly worry regional allies and investors include tax and customs reforms, the introduction of a national currency, and the renegotiation of contracts related to mining, hydrocarbons, public procurement and infrastructure.

The platform lists a number of measures that would need to be implemented before a new currency could be introduced. But the move would pose another threat to West Africa’s CFA franc currency, which some junta-led states in the region have also said they might abandon.

The platform does not provide detail on how it would seek to restructure contracts, but it said it would do so to “to make the mining industry an important lever of our socio-economic development” and “to maximize revenues from oil production”.

Senegal’s first offshore oil development is due to start production in mid-2024. The Sangomar oil and gas project operated by Woodside Energy is expected to produce about 100,000 barrels per day.

(By Bate Felix and Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Frances Kerry)

African Rainbow Minerals (ARM) said on Friday it was deferring plans to expand output at its Bokoni mine due to low platinum group metal (PGM) prices after reporting a 43% drop in its half-year profit.

The diversified South African miner’s headline earnings declined to 2.96 billion rand ($158.5 million) in the six months to December 2023, from 5.17 billion rand previously, as lower thermal coal and PGM prices hit income.

ARM cut its interim dividend to 6 rand per share, from 14 rand per share previously.

The miner acquired the Bokoni mine in South Africa from Anglo American Platinum and Atlatsa Resources Corporation in 2022 as part of its plans to expand PGM output.

Bokoni mine, which had been put under care and maintenance by its previous owners in 2017, resumed production in November 2023, with plans to further expand output.

However, the sharp fall in PGM prices over the past year, mainly due to weaker demand in China and an uncertain global economic outlook, has forced South African miners, who account for 70% of world output, to suspend projects and cut costs.

ARM said a bankable feasibility study for the phased development of Bokoni, a key step towards securing funding, had been deferred “due to depressed commodity prices and uncertain immediate outlook”.

The company said the prices of palladium and rhodium fell 42% and 70%, respectively, during the period under review, resulting in a 40% decline in the average realized rand price for its set of PGMs.

ARM said its immediate priority is to conserve cash while ramping up production on a phased basis from the installed capacity of 60,000 metric tons of ore per month using existing infrastructure.

($1 = 18.6702 rand)

(By Nelson Banya; Editing by Jamie Freed, Eileen Soreng and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

Perseus is offering A$0.55 cash per each share of OreCorp it does not already own, which values the target company at A$258 million ($172m). The bid represents a 4% premium over its rival Silvercorp Metals (TSX, NYSE: SVM). 

Silvercorp approached OreCorp in August last year, hoping to obtain the Nyanzaga gold project in Tanzania, located near Barrick Gold’s (TSX: ABX; NYSE: GOLD) Bulyanhulu mine and AngloGold Ashanti’s (JSE: ANG) (NYSE:AU) Geita mine.

Both bidders, who have been battling for OreCorp since, claim Tanzanian authorities are ready to approve their offers.

The Nyanzaga mine would cost $474 million to build and is slated to produce 242,000 ounces gold per year over its first decade, according to a feasibility study issued in August 2022.

Perseus has three operating mines in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, producing gold at a rate of more than 535,000 ounces per year.

Vancouver-based Silvercorp has two producing precious metals mines in China and has been looking to diversify its portfolio. Its bid for OreCorp closes on March 22 unless extended.