“There’s an incredible difference in yield between mining metals from ore and recovering them from old devices – urban mining, if you will,” she says.
The World Gold council reckons 262 tonnes of gold was used in electronics last year.
“With gold, 1 tonne of ore will average about 6g of metal,” Professor Wilson says.
“From electronic waste, the same weight will generate more like 350g. Yet only around a fifth of global electronic waste is recycled, while in countries like India, it is more like 1.5 per cent.”
>>>Scroll down for the top gold movers over the past week>>>
All up, that’s $52.5m worth of gold just sitting in Australia’s collective bottom draw. Food for thought.
Could urban mining develop into a lucrative side hustle? Maybe, especially with analysts like Bell Potter’s Kevin McKay predicting that another “break out to the up-side may be imminent” for the gold price.
“A review of the technical action over the past six months shows clearly the gold price continues in a major upward trend despite suffering a $US200 correction in March 2020,” he says.
“A close above $US1,788 would be required to signal a full-scale assault on $US1,800 and perhaps ultimately a test of the 2011 all-time highs.
“The recent technical action suggests the gold price is poised and positioned to make that move sooner rather than later.”
Winners & Losers
Here’s how ASX-listed gold stocks performed for the period May 18– 22 [intraday]:
Scroll or swipe to reveal table. Click headings to sort. Best viewed on a laptop:
The minnow — which has done zero fieldwork since the June quarter last year — says this cash will go towards an upcoming exploration program at its early stage Eastern Goldfields projects.
The week prior Riversgold went from 0.8c to a high of 1.3c per share on big volumes, and for no apparent reason.
Minnow PanTerra Gold (ASX:PGI) almost doubled its market cap on Thursday after finalising a joint venture to develop the advanced La Demajagua gold-silver deposit in Cuba.
PanTerra — chosen by the Cuban government’s mining company as a proposed 49 per cent JV partner way back in October 2018 — wants to produce ~60,000 tonnes a year of concentrate grading around 47 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 380g/t silver for at least six years.
Torian Resources (ASX:TNR) has drilling results pending from the Mt Stirling gold camp, which is right next door to $600m market cap miner RED 5’s (ASX: RED) tenement package that hosts the King of The Hills mine.
Torian says this eight-hole drill program — first drilling the ground has seen in four years — is testing the ‘down plunge’ on a significant historical gold intercept of 35m at 2.99g/t.
The stock is up 53 per cent for the week, and 225 per cent year-to-date.
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