Although the enterprise only turned 25 years old in 2008, BarrickGold Corp. is the world’s largest producer of gold by many measures of size.
It undoubtedly produces the most ounces, with its many mines turning out 7.66 million ounces in 2008. Copper Mining Companies is most lucrative as properly, with an operating money flow of $two.21 billion in that year, seeing that figure 27 percent more than 2007 in a time when most of the world’s firms have been contracting quickly.
Barrick is pretty a lot a pure gold firm. In fact, it turned down the opportunity to invest in a main gold home in Mongolia recently since it felt that as well much of the property’s worth was attributable to copper rather than gold.
The Toronto-based miner, like most major resource firms nowadays, gets its gold from mines in diverse regions around the globe. Its very first massive mines, exactly where it got its begin 25 years ago, were in Nevada and it still create fairly a bit of gold from that state. (A little more than three million ounces of its production came from North America in 2008, with most of that coming from Nevada.)
Mines on other continents
But it moved rapidly into South America as well, and these days has production in Peru and Chile and is building mines in Argentina and the Dominican Republic. (About 2.1 million ounces of production came from South America in 2008.)
It also mines gold in Africa and the Australia-Pacific region.
When quite a few mining companies create a “balance” in lots of parts of their operation — base vs. valuable metals, underground vs. surface mines, mining vs. refining — Barrick performs to obtain a geopolitical balance. Most of its mines are in stable political jurisdictions, but it also is willing to pioneer development in regions that might be far more difficult, such as Africa.
Barrick currently is making gold from 27 operating mines on 5 continents. It is building many much more, some as replacements and some for development, from its in-the-ground reserves of 138.five million ounces.
With comparatively low operating costs, and large reserves, Barrick is likely to do nothing at all but stretch out the amount by which it leads the gold-mining race.