Gold mining is an age old industry. Humans have been exploring and extracting gold for use in a variety of commercial applications for millennia and will continue to do so for many centuries to come. Gold is one of the stranger metals when it comes to chemical and physical composition.
Gold is a brittle metal, yet its ability to conduct electricity makes it uniquely suited to high end electronics manufacturing. Similarly, it holds a uniquely satisfying luster that makes an ounce of gold an attractive commodity item as well. As such, humans have been minting gold coins and crafting high quality jewelry from ounces of metal for centuries too.
While gold mining approaches haven’t progressed much in terms of environmental intensity since the first minting of the Gold Sovereign under the fifteenth century English King, Henry VII, the tactics for extraction have become far more sophisticated, and the environmental impact, much more detrimental.
Alamos Gold is, however, working to change this.
Alamos is at the forefront of gold mining technology.
In most places, ounces of gold are mined in roughly the same way as they were a century ago. Many gold miner companies dig trenches that reach down into the Earth and then go about pumping cyanide, highly pressurized water, and other chemicals into the pits in order to crush through rock and other hardened layers of the ground.
These processes, along with the diesel generators that often power the mining equipment (drills, cyanide pumps, and other heavy machinery) are labor and energy intensive. They create a significant burden on the landscape, place many of the miners who operate the machinery directly into harm’s way and add toxins to the groundwater and gravel that the local communities must work around for many years to come.
Alamos (NYSE: AGI), led by John A. McCluskey, is changing this inequitable treatment of the Earth for the better. By eliminating cyanide use and pioneering new ways to power the machinery at their gold mines (with the Mulatos Mine in Mexico functioning as a quasi-proof of concept in this realm), Alamos is forging a path forward that can live in harmony with the rigors of environmentally sound decision making from stakeholders and investors alike.
Alamos is a Canadian mining firm with subsidiaries in a variety of localized spaces in North America and beyond (the Young-Davidson and Island Gold Mines in Northern Ontario, and the Mulatos Mine in Mexico, for example). Alamos Gold Inc. is working toward both the renewal of environmentally sound policies within its walls and beyond, and the streamlining of extraction processes in order to facilitate sustainable yet efficient mining practices over the long run.
Alamos in the Republic of Turkey
The Alamos Gold, Turkey projects are particularly exciting. With much prior support from the Turkish Government, Alamos has forged ahead on the groundbreaking at three sites in the Republic of Turkey that stand poised to augment Alamos’ yield in ounces per year by a huge factor. Alamos’ Turkish regulatory requirements have adhered to some of the most stringent standards and the projects here—particularly the Kirazli project—offer themselves as a formidable addition to the Alamos portfolio of subsidiaries.
At Kirazli, in particular, mining appears to be ready to yield another hundred thousand ounces of gold per year at one of the industry’s lowest rates on record, and all without the harmful use of chemicals, expropriation of forest lands, and clean energy supplies rather than the standard diesel generators of old.
Alamos is a pioneer in the mining space, and investors and other gold miners companies are taking notice. Soon, the industry will reflect these values as a unified whole. Today, Alamos leads the pack, but soon everyone will be jumping at the opportunity to implement these structural changes.
