By Cailyn Theo
The COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the gold mining sector and its workers. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused production and cost problems that could have prevented near-record profits. Each company’s response will affect its long-term success.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent response by central banks has many implications for the gold mining industry. From January 1, 2020, gold prices increased by 28 percent. The margins of gold miners have increased as a result of falling energy prices and currency exchange rates in some gold-mining nations. Two things have impacted these positive margin effects. One is the COVID-19 threat to many mining companies and employees. The other is travel restrictions that have stopped access to mines. Lockdowns in South Africa, Peru, Canada, and Mexico have caused operations to be halted or reduced.
On the other hand, mines with low currency depreciation (e.g., in Mexico, Russia, and South Africa) will be the biggest winners.
MineSpans’ study has shown that industry cash costs could drop by 8 percent in 2020, from $591 per ounce in 2019 to $544 this year. This projection includes the 2020 H1 movement in energy prices and the 5 to 20% depreciation in mining currencies in these countries. It does not take into account the operational effects of COVID-19.
This post was written by Justin Tidd, Director at https://beckerwmsusa.com/ For over 15 years, Becker Communications has been the industry’s leader in increasingly more sophisticated electrical mining communication systems. As they expanded into surface mining, railroads, and tunneling they added wireless communication systems, handheld radios, tagging and tracking systems, as well as gas monitoring.
