The only working gold mine in mainland Britain is set to open in the small village of Tyndrum in the West Highlands of Scotland.
Highlighting the growing demand for gold – and the skyrocketing
gold prices – one mining company has big plans to open the gold mine on the site of an old exploration tunnel.
The tunnel – which has been dug into the side of a 2,900 foot peak known as Beinn Chuirn - is already in existence, and gold miners will enter the new mine through the existing Cononish Farm entrance, which lies just west of Tyndrum.
Despite mining for gold beginning at the site in the early 1980’s, none of the precious metal has yet been extracted, and, following the price of gold falling in the late 1990’s, work at the site was abandoned.
With the price of gold soaring to new heights today, it is hard to believe that it fell from more than $400 per ounce to under $300 per ounce in the 1990’s. Now, with the future of gold looking so strong – and prices rising year on year for the last decade – work to extract gold from the mine looks set to begin again in earnest.
Chief executive of mining company Scotgold Resources, Chris Sangster, told the BBC that he planned to reopen the mine from his base in Upper Tyndrum Station, located on the West Highland Line railway.
Mr Sangster is clearly keen to make the most of
gold prices that have seen record rises, reaching a peak of $1,900 per ounce in August of last year as investors sought a safe place for their money.
He said, “Cononish is a quite high grade deposit, so it has a relatively low operating cost to produce an ounce of gold. If you can pay back the capital you're always going to make a profit, because you've got a very good margin.
“The trick, because it's a relatively small project, is to get the project finance and the capital paid back at a time of high
gold prices,” Mr Sangster went on to say.
The new gold mine is slated to operate for the next eight to ten years, and is tipped to produce around 20,000 ounces of gold and 80,000 ounces of silver each year.
The mine project was initially met with concern from the park authority managing the land that it sits on at the heart of the beautiful Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park. Following more than two years of discussions, the mine has now been approved.
Fiona Logan, chief executive of the park authority, told the news provider, “Our biggest concern was what it would look like, whether it would look natural, and the effects on biodiversity," says Fiona Logan, chief executive of the park authority.
"We were concerned about tourism too. But interestingly the local community were very much in favour. Mining, lead mining in fact, has always been a part of that area. The community felt they could exploit that cultural heritage and actually attract more tourists with a goldmine in the region,” Ms Logan added.
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