Gold mining company Scotgold Resources is targeting significant expansion with plans to open further mines across Scotland.

As well as expanding its Cononish facility near Loch Lomond it holds 13 licences, covering 2,900 sq km across the Grampian Mountain range.

“The geology points to further exceptionally high-grade deposits, like Cononish, and it is part of our longer-term strategy to explore these areas with the vision to develop additional gold mines in Scotland,” said chairman Peter Hetherington. “2023 is shaping up to be an extremely exciting year.

“As we begin to explore the resource/reserve expansion potential of Cononish to increase its life of mine and our regional licence areas we will continue to open Scotland as a new gold mining province and ultimately develop future mining operations in Scotland.”

Chief executive Phil Day who joined the company in April 2021 to implement a re-design of the mine schedule, said: “It has been a year of transformative progress as we continue to ramp up production at our Cononish gold mine in Scotland towards Phase 2 mining, to achieve a yearly run rate of 23,500 ounces of gold in 2023.

“We were delighted to achieve Phase 1 mining in Q1 2022 and subsequently to announce the significant milestone of commercial production on 30 June 2022, after three consecutive months of positive operating cashflow, and continue to operate as a cash generative mining operation with buoyant gold concentrate sales.

“2023 is shaping up to be an exciting year for us in terms of mine development and gold production.”

Since he joined the company, the payroll has grown 156% to 96, of which 51 are from Scotland.

“In line with our vision to build a multi-asset gold production company, we will continue to increase our headcount during 2023 and beyond, through apprenticeships, internships, and student bursaries such as ours with the University of St Andrews, to become the employer of choice in the region,” said Mr Day.  

“Cononish is an exceptionally high-grade gold underground mining operation… and has a current life of mine of 8.5 years with an estimated 555,000 tonnes of ore.

“Notably, even without any further resource exploration and expansion, Cononish’s in-situ value is estimated to be £288 million, at current gold prices of £1,456 per ounce and projected All in Sustaining cost of £554 per ounce, will place Scotgold as one of the highest yielding – lowest cost gold producers globally once in full production in 2023. 

“Looking ahead to 2023, I remain hugely excited and look forward to keeping stakeholders updated on our developments as we continue to build an intergenerational mining company for the future.”

For the year ended 30 June the company posted a loss before taxation of £5.93m (2021: £2.74m) on total revenues of £9.7m (2021: £165,000)