AngloGold Ashanti chief executive officer Alberto Calderon is comfortable with the current size of the gold company after acquiring Corvus Gold in January.
There are many variables to consider when evaluating the structure of a company and whether further expansions or modifications are needed. Above all, it comes down to having control of a portfolio.
“There’s something like an optimal size for a modern-day mining company – and a gold company. That optimal size, it’s going to be something between three and five million ounces,” Calderon said at a Melbourne Mining Club luncheon this week.
“If you want to have say two or one and a half (million ounces), you can have it but then the size of your corporate, the size of the chief technical officer, the size of your exploration is totally different.
“When you have a size of about three-and-a-half or four or five (million ounces), you have the scale to have centres at the corporate that can really make a difference in how you do your assets.
“In terms of … the optimal size, we’re close to that. We could be a bit bigger, but we are sufficiently big that we can afford to have those centres of excellence.”
Calderon also spoke about the gold industry’s important role in decarbonisation and AngloGold’s plans to accelerate its net-zero strategy.
The gold sector leads the way when it comes to emissions reduction, but hasn’t been the best promoter of its achievements, something which Calderon lamented.
“We’ve done a horrible job (of getting the message out),” Calderon said. “We are liking the defensive and we should be on the offensive.
“Emissions for the listed gold sector – that’s Scope 1, 2 and 3 – are estimated at around 78 million tonnes (Mt) of CO2-equivalent a year. That translates into roughly 0.16 per cent of the 50 billion tonnes of the world’s annual carbon emissions.
“For context, emissions from aviation are 12 times higher. According to Our World in Data, the global iron and steel industries – at just over 7 per cent of all emissions – account for 45 times what our industry emits.”
Gold emissions are also a fraction of the CO2 contributed by cryptocurrencies, with Bitcoin and Ethereum (177Mt per year) the most notable polluters.
Calderon said AngloGold will lay out a renewed 2030 emissions reduction target in the coming months.