Post pandemic, financings for gold projects rebound

A review of capital raisings for gold projects around the world between February 1, 2020 and February 28, 2021 conducted by The Northern Miner’s sister company Mining Intelligence, has found that of the $2.9 billion raised for gold projects in 41 countries, 75% went to projects in just five countries – Canada, Mexico, Australia, the United States and Chile. Of those, Canada received the lion’s share with $965.07 million (34%). Mexico followed in second place with $389.09 million (14%); Australia with $291.04 million (10%); the US with $255.56 million (9%); and Chile with $253.71 million (9%).

Katja Freitag, the manager of Mining Intelligence who teased out the data and crunched the numbers, noted that while “capital raisings dropped off significantly in March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, they started to recover in April 2020, allowing money to flow into gold exploration.”

“Things seem to have normalized again,” she added, noting that capital raisings in February 2021 were “slightly above” those recorded in the same month last year.

The analysis also found that more than half of the money raised (57%), went to 63 gold projects to advance economic studies – from scoping studies or preliminary economic assessments through to bankable feasibility studies and permitting. Seventy-one percent of the projects were in the early stage of exploration, although they only accounted for about 25% of the total capital raised during the period.

Fifty percent of the funds went to fourteen projects, four of which have recently started production or are about to start production, and ten are in the exploration phase.

In total, Mining Intelligence recorded 415 financing transactions during the 13-month period studied, spread across 301 global gold projects.

Click here for an excel download of capital raisings from the Mining Intelligence database.