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re; sale of Focus Minerals
This week, Focus CEO Zhaoya Wang was "excited" after agreeing to sell the Coolgardie project for $40 million less than half of what it was valued at in 2012.
background story,,
China is the world's biggest gold producer with an estimated 340 tonnes in 2017 and Australia the second-biggest with 301 tonnes for the year
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02...loss-from-australian-gold-investment/10808558
 
Ded Driver said:
re; sale of Focus Minerals
This week, Focus CEO Zhaoya Wang was "excited" after agreeing to sell the Coolgardie project for $40 million less than half of what it was valued at in 2012.
background story,,
China is the world's biggest gold producer with an estimated 340 tonnes in 2017 and Australia the second-biggest with 301 tonnes for the year
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02...loss-from-australian-gold-investment/10808558
However given that the mine can no longer produce gold profitably, I might be "delighted" also. It is not what it was valued at in 2012 that matters, but what it is worth now. The company wanted $85 million, but given that they had lost $120 million operating the mine, $40 million beats nothing.

It is always difficult to get accurate figures on each country's production. These seem to be the final figures for 2017 (China 426, Australia 295). It is easy to estimate what Australia's production will be for the year ahead because our figures are public (China not). Imagine that in 1970, South Africa was producing 1,000 tonnes per year.

1550467272_world_gold_production.jpg
 
Please not to make light of a tragic story but have a look at the name of the person who wrote the story, how do you pronounce that, it's got less vowels than a welsh town.
 
goldtrapper said:
Russia must have a lot of those "Gold pebbles" popping up in creeks. :)
Prospecting by individuals is probably illegal I think. And the alluvial has been extensively worked over, although sluicing was operating around Kolyma when I was there. Slave workers on the "gulags" did a pretty good job from the 1930s onwards (16,000 died in 6 months just pushing a road into Kolyma), but the permafrost (frozen ground) makes hand mining difficult. Russia was strange in having no major gold rushes, and in having quartz mining precede alluvial mining (despite gold being discovered in antiquity, with recorded mining in northern Siberia in the 1700s). I educated one of their placer experts in the use of metal detectors in the early 1990s, which was tried in the Ural goldfields. A couple of my photos:

1550966632_kolyma_river_placers.jpg


Kolyma river placers, in the Chersky Range near Ust-Nera

1550966692_kolyma_nuggets.jpg


Some Kolyma gold nuggets (largest about 6 cm across - you can still see the remains of the shape of a gold crystal in it)
 

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