GOLD: PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE

Has Gold Production Finally Peaked?

- BY STEVE VOYNICK

Reserve bars, each containing 400 troy ounces of .999-fine gold, at a European central bank. 17.1 percent of the gold in existence is in the form of government bullion reserves.

Wikimedia Commons

It seems that gold is never far from the headlines. Shortly before this writing (November 2024), the yellow metal made news yet again when its price soared to a record $2788.54 per troy ounce. But monetary value is only one of the intriguing things about gold. Also fascinating are the metal’s distinctive color, extreme rarity and the numbers that define its historical output, mine-production trends, supply-and-demand relationships and ore grades. And these numbers are often not what we might expect.

Consider these statistics: The 110 million troy ounces of gold mined globally in 2024 set an all-time annual production record. Consider also that half of all the gold ever produced throughout history was mined in just the last 38 years.

The world is currently in the midst of its greatest gold-mining boom ever. But many mining and commodity experts believe that this boom’s best days are now in the rearview mirror and that production will soon begin an inevitable decline.

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