One of the leading global players in the buying and selling of precious metals and refining service providers, the Canadian firm KITCO Metals Inc. is positing in a December 2018 sector assessment that global gold production is expected to realise a reassuring stability, citing one analytical firm as forecasting a production fall of half a percentage point and another envisaging a production rise of less than that.
The Gold Fields Minerals Services team at REFINITEV, a highly credentialled global provider of financial markets data is forecasting that gold production will reduce marginally from an estimated 3,281.7 tonnes in 2018 to 3,265.5 tonnes this year, a contraction of around half a percentage point. Conversely, the sector consultancy Metals Focus sees global gold mine production inching by 0.2% in 2019 to a new record of 107.6 million ounces.
While GFMS focuses its assessment attentions on gold production in Africa, Australia-Oceania and Europe the KITCO assessment tags Asia, South America and North America as areas in which gold production will see a marginal decline. Such production decline as is likely to occur, the KITCO evaluation says, is likely to derive from instances of ‘lower grades” though adjustments in production levels is not likely to result in major mine closures.