AngloGold Ashanti Brings Brazilian Facility Back Online, Ends the Need to Export Concentrate
AngloGold Ashanti has restarted a processing plant in Brazil that had been sitting dormant since 2022, a move that now lets the miner handle its entire domestic output of gold concentrate without sending any portion overseas for processing.
According to Luis Lima, AngloGold Ashanti's Latin America regional director, the second production line at the Queiroz industrial site went back into operation earlier this month. He shared the update with Reuters at a mining industry conference held in Belo Horizonte.
With a price tag of 105 million reais, the reactivation brings the complex's total throughput back up to its original ceiling - 280,000 metric tons of gold concentrate annually. This follows the 2024 relaunch of the site's first plant, meaning both units are now operational again.
During the period when just one line was functioning, AngloGold had to offload a share of its Brazilian concentrate to outside buyers rather than processing everything in-house, Lima noted.
Both units had gone offline back in 2022, largely to accommodate upgrades tied to wastewater treatment systems. Lima pointed to the company's push for tighter vertical integration as the primary motivation for bringing the plants back into service.
Beyond gold processing, the Queiroz complex also manufactures sulfuric acid, with production capacity there sitting at approximately 240,000 tons per year.
Currently, AngloGold Ashanti(AU) was traded at around $117.72 per shares at the time of this article's publication.
Related assets: Gold, Silver, Palladium, Platinum