– Peak gold – Biggest gold story not being reported
– Gold ‘Mining Zombie Apocalypse’ caused miners to slash exploration budgets
– Decline in gold production at world’s top 10 gold mining companies – Byron King
– “No new big mines being built in the world today” – Glencore CEO Glasenberg
– Primary global gold output declined in 2016 – Thomson Reuters via Mining.com
– 2016 was first year of fall in mine production since 2008
– Rising safe haven demand from ‘Trumpflation’ and  geopolitical tensions and falling mine supply should lead to “much higher gold prices”
– What happens when the unstoppable force of robust global demand for gold meets the immovable object of a small, finite, rare and dwindling supply of physical gold?

South Africa Gold Production

We have written about ‘peak gold’ and the ramifications of the underappreciated peak gold phenomenon for the gold market since 2008. The risk of falling gold production and a consequent reduction in supply are slowly percolating into the mainstream and analysts are asking whether 2015 or 2016 marked the year of peak gold production.

Byron King has written about this increasingly important supply factor in the gold market and brings together the views and research of Glencore CEO, Ivan Glasenberg, Thomson Reuters GFMS and others.

Goldman Sachs

The collapse in South African gold production (see chart above) is the ‘classic canary in the coal mine’ and likely foreshadows the coming decline in global gold production.

South Africa produced over 1,000 tonnes of gold in 1970 but production has fallen to below 250 tonnes in recent years (see chart above). This is a collapse as these are levels last seen in 1922 and happened despite the massive technological advances of recent years and more intensive mining practices.