Gold price reaches new record Australian dollar high on eve of Diggers & Dealers

The price of the precious metal that underpins WA’s Goldfields has reached a new record Australian dollar high on the eve of this year’s Diggers & Dealers Mining Forum. The gold price on Friday peaked at $3809 per ounce, Melbourne-based industry analysts Surbiton Associates said. Surbiton director Sandra Close said just-released June quarterly reports had shown that some of the margins companies were achieving were the highest they had ever been since the modern gold boom began some 40 years ago. Dr Close said that for the June quarter, the average gold price per ounce was $3494 ($US2341), based on the daily London Bullion Market official pm fix and the Reserve Bank of Australia daily exchange rate. “The margins some of the producers are reporting, between their sales prices and their all-in-sustaining costs per ounce of gold, are quite exceptional,” she said on the eve of the 2024 Diggers & Dealers Mining Forum, which starts in Kalgoorlie-Boulder on Monday. “Some operations with significant by-products such as copper are reporting remarkably negative costs for gold production, thanks to their by-product credits.” She said Evolution Mining’s Ernest Henry operation near Cloncurry, Queensland, was a prime example, producing about 19,500oz of gold and 13,000 tonnes of copper in the June quarter. Dr Close said with an average received gold price of $3512/oz and an AISC of minus $2972/oz, thanks to its large copper by-product credits, the implied margin was about $6500/oz of gold. “Even some of the pure gold operations at the lower end of the cost curve are doing very well, despite not having by-product credits,” she said. “Ramelius Resources’ Mount Magnet operation reported an achieved gold price of $3243 per ounce and an ASIC cost of $982 per ounce, indicating an implied margin of about $2250 per ounce.”