After a short increase in early 2018, reaching a maximum of $ 2,535 per ounce on March 25, the price of gold steadily fell in Q2 and Q3 to $ 1,176 per ounce on August 16 and then recovered to $ 1,280 per ounce December 28th.
The global cumulative quarterly operating profit of the major gold producers followed the gold price and decreased by 44% during the year, from $ 2500 million in 1 quarter to $ 1,400 million in the third quarter and remaining stable in the fourth quarter of 2018.
Quarterly gold production, reported by publicly traded companies, accounts for about 65-70% of total world gold production and can be considered as an indicator of the overall state of the world gold mining industry.
According to the report, global average quarterly total maintenance costs were 3% lower than in the third quarter of 2018. In general, gold producers reacted relatively quickly to deteriorating conditions in the gold market and managed to reduce their costs, trying to make up for lost margins.
The capital increase completed by gold producers, developers and researchers increased by 17% from 3 to 4 quarters, which indicates that investors have regained confidence.
For the fourth quarter, ending December 31, 2018, world gold production was 16.8 million tons. North America was the largest producer of gold (4.3 million tons), followed by Africa (3.5 million tons) and Australia and Oceania (3.0 million tons).
Three regions that led to an increase in gold production by 2% qoq: North America (+266 thousand tons or an increase of 7%), South America (+215 thousand tons or an increase of 10%) and Australia and Oceania (+148 thousand tons or 5% more than in the third quarter of 2018). Mining in Asia plummeted - it fell by 32% due to a significant decline in gold production at the Indonesian Grasberg mine.
Seven of the top 10 largest gold companies reported an increase in gold production in Q4 2018, while three were faced with a slowdown in mining. The largest increase in gold production was achieved at the Kumtor mines (up to 86%), Lihir (up to 38%) and Gait (up to 22%).
The third and fourth in this ranking are the giant Polyus Gold mine in Russia (345 thousand ounces) and the Barrick Pueblo Viejo mine in the Dominican Republic (277 thousand ounces).
