About Gold
Regional diversity of gold demand
Gold is a precious metal. It has emotional, cultural and financial value and different people across the globe buy gold for different reasons, often influenced by a range of national socio-cultural factors, local market conditions and wider macro-economic drivers.
How Gold is Mined: The lifecycle
People in hard hats working underground is what often comes to mind when thinking about gold mining. Yet mining the ore is just one stage in a long and complex process. Long before any gold can be extracted, significant exploration and development needs to take place, both to determine, as accurately as possible, the size of the deposit as well as how to extract and process the ore efficiently, safely and responsibly. On average, it takes between 10-20 years before a mine is even ready to produce material that can be refined.
Gold Mining
Gold mining describes the process of extracting ore – metal-rich rock – from the earth’s crust. And, as with other minerals, there are a number of geological processes that are involved in forming these ore deposits. Modern gold mining predominantly takes place in areas where there is a significant concentration of gold-bearing ore (ore body). Today, 60%-70% of the world’s gold production comes from surface mines, while the remainder is from underground gold mines.