AngloGold boosts investment in Brazil as it mulls Corrego’s fate

South African gold miner AngloGold Ashanti (NYSE: AU; ASX: AGG; JSE: ANG) plans to spend 1.1 billion reais (US$198 million) in Brazil this year, mainly on exploration.

The company, which invested 900 million reais (US$163 million) in the South American country last year, noted it has not abandoned plans to sell its Córrego do Sítio gold complex, located in the southeastern mining state of Minas Gerais.

Operations at Córrego, one of the two main mines at AngloGold’s AGA Mineração division, were halted last August as the complex was operating at a loss.

The other AGA Mineração’s asset is the Cuiabá gold complex, which includes the Cuiabá and Lamego underground mines and the Cuiabá and Queiroz plants. The latter was temporarily shut down in February 2023 to improve conditions of the Calcinados tailings facility.

In response to the legislative changes in Brazil, which followed the Brumadinho tailings failure in 2019, AngloGold began the mandatory decommissioning of its existing waste storage units by transitioning to filtered tailings stacking. This was completed in 2022, making the company the first large gold producer in the country to have eliminated all upstream tailings.

AngloGold said this week it was considering strategic alternatives for the idled Córrego do Sítio complex, including its potential sale. “We are open and actively evaluating the potential for resuming operations. There are numerous discussions underway,” Marcelo Pereira, the company’s vice president for Latin America, told local paper Valor, without providing further details about the ongoing negotiations.

The asset consists of one open pit mine and one underground mine, which have been in production since 1989.

AngloGold produced 338,000 oz. of gold in Brazil from its two mining complexes last year. Together, they accounted for around 13% of the company’s global output.

During the first three months of the year, AngloGold’s output in the country increased by 52% compared to the same period last year, rising from 57,000 ounces to 86,000 ounces. 

The gold miner also holds two greenfield projects in Colombia and one in Nevada.