Gold steadies as traders weigh outlook for Fed rate cuts
Bullion traded near $2,626 an ounce in thin trading after closing 1.1% higher on Friday.
Shares in Canada’s Endeavour Mining (TSX:EDV) (OTCQX:EDVMF) were up more than 2.5% Wednesday after the company announced that is going ahead with the construction of a Carbon-in-Leach (“CIL”) plant at its Ity gold mine in Côte d’Ivoire.
The West Africa-focused firm said the project, which requires an initial investment of $412 million, will extend the life of the Ity mine by 14 years, based on current reserves of 2.9 million ounces, up by one million ounces since the latest feasibility study.
The project, which requires an initial investment of $412 million, will add 14 years of productive life to the Côte d’Ivoire-based gold mine.
Endeavour’s in-house construction team has begun moving from the Houndé gold project in Burkina Faso to Ity in Côte d’Ivoire, where construction is expected to take 20 months, with first gold pour projected for mid-2019.
The Ity mine has produced more than 1.2 million ounces of gold in its over 20 years of operations. Once the CIL project is complete, the asset will produce about 144,000 ounces of gold annually for at least the first nine years, at a low all-in-sustaining costs of $507 per ounce.
“Today’s study clearly positions Ity as our next flagship asset with robust project economics, a strong long-life production profile, and significant exploration upside,” the company’s President and CEO, Sébastien de Montessus, said in the statement.
Endeavour has expanded its portfolio in recent years and it now has counts of seven mines and projects in African countries, including Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali and Burkina Faso.
The company recently completed the acquisition of Avnel Gold Mining, which gives it an 80% stake in the Kalana gold project in Mali.
Last year, Endeavour recorded record gold output as it produced 584,000 ounces, or 13% more than in the previous financial year, with record-low all-in sustaining costs of $895 an ounce, down 3%. For 2017, it expects to generate between 600,000 and 640,000 ounces of gold.
The stock was trading 2.6% higher to Cdn $23.17 at 12:03PM ET and it’s up almost 16% since the beginning of the year.
