Georgetown: The price of gold fell to US$1,400 an ounce causing renewed mayhem among gold mining stocks worldwide.
Despite this volatility however, local miners say they will not lose their nerves. They are bent on holding onto working towards the 2013 target of 460,000 ounces.
Miners who are likely to be hard hit before others are those who invested heavily in expensive earth moving equipment during high gold prices in 2011 and 2012.
Some large scale miners, with their potential for economies of scale, can remain profitable until the price falls to US$1000 an ounce. Then they will have to close down their operations, sources inside the industry say.
President of the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association (GGDMA), Patrick Harding, today said that members are not going to speculate about the future too much because there is nothing they can do about the prices anyhow.
He stressed that local miners have to remain focused on improving efficiencies in existing operations.
“They can get by quite decently if they can raise the rate of recovery of gold from the sluice boxes from the current average of 45 to 50% to 70 to 80%,”he said.
He said that equipment for gravity concentration processes such as shaking tables and for flotation processing are available to increase recovery rates but miners would have to be happy about the balance between the costs and benefits of such equipment.
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