AngloGold Ashanti, the South African-listed gold mining company, has announced that it has agreed a deal to pay US$150m in cash to Coeur Mining, the American precious metals mining company, to acquire its wholly owned subsidiary, Coeur Sterling.

Gold mining operations

AngloGold Ashanti said that Coeur Sterling owns neighbouring properties to its own in the Beatty district of southern Nevada. The properties to be acquired in the transaction include Coeur’s C-Horst, SNA, Secret Pass and Daisy ore bodies, as well as the decommissioned Sterling Mine and all tenements that surround these properties.

AngloGold Ashanti USA Holdings Inc, a wholly owned subsidiary of AngloGold Ashanti, will acquire all shares of Coeur Sterling for US$150m in cash when the transaction closes.

The properties are estimated to hold 914,000 ounces of gold, the company said. It stated that if further exploration results in a mineral resource greater than 3.5m ounces, AngloGold Ashtani will pay Coeur an extra US$50m. This deferred consideration would be made 30 days after that mineral resource declaration is made, it added.

“This acquisition further enhances the value proposition we are building in the Beatty District,” said AngloGold Ashanti CEO Alberto Calderon. “The addition of these properties consolidates our ownership position in one of North America’s most promising new gold districts and gives us the ability to develop it in a way that will realise its full potential for the benefit of all stakeholders.”

Low-risk production centre for mining

This acquisition presents a compelling strategic fit with AngloGold Ashanti’s assets in the Beatty District of Nevada and its aspirations for the optimal development of that district into a new, low-risk production centre. 

It further consolidates the land and tenement ownership within the Beatty District, as the Coeur Southern Nevada Properties are immediately south of AngloGold Ashanti’s Silicon and Merlin properties, and completely surround AngloGold Ashanti’s Mother Lode property, it continued.

AngloGold Ashanti said that it holds several exploration and development assets (North Bullfrog, Silicon, Merlin, Mother Lode, Transvaal and Rhyolite) in the Beatty District. The mining company has published a Mineral Resource at Silicon of 3.37Moz ounces for the year ending 31st December 2021. 

It recently acquired the neighbouring North Bullfrog and Mother Lode projects through the acquisition of Corvus Gold Inc. on 18th January 2022 and will formally declare a Mineral Resource from those assets in February 2023.

Furthermore, the company is currently conducting a feasibility study on the North Bullfrog project and a pre-feasibility study on the Silicon project. It is anticipated -- prior to this acquisition and the additional potential it brings -- pending the results of the studies already underway, as well as the progress of the attendant permitting process, that first production for AngloGold Ashanti from the Beatty District will be realised in about three-year’s time, and that the Beatty District will yield production to AngloGold Ashanti of about 300,000oz a year, with an all in sustaining cost of less than US$1,000/oz, by the end of the decade.