Gran Colombia Gold produced a total of 20,644 ounces (oz) of gold in August, 14% more than last month’s production. This brought the total for the first two months of the third quarter of 2020 to 38,755 oz, 5% more than the same period last year.
Gran Colombia, which has several underground mines and two processing plants in operation at its Segovia and Marmato operations, reported total gold production during the first eight months of 2020 at 143,230 oz, compared to 155,359 oz in the first eight months of 2019. This reflects the impact of COVID-19 in mining operations, predominantly in the second quarter of this year, the company said.
The company expects its 2020 annual production to range between 218,000 oz and 226,00 oz of gold.
“We are pleased with the improvement in our operating results in August,” Gran Colombia CEO Lombardo Paredes said. “Segovia continues to operate steadily and at Marmato, we are beginning to see the benefit of our optimization work at the Zona Alta mine, now that we have a complement of workers available.
“We remain attentive to our COVID-19 protocols to protect the safety of our workers and we are sure that we will comply with our production plan for the year.”
At Caldas Gold’s Marmato mine, operations also benefited from the implementation of action plans to begin to improve mining practices to reduce dilution, as described in the recent Caldas Gold prefeasibility technical report for the mine and its expansion.