Newmont declares commercial production at Ahafo North

Newmont declared commercial production at its Ahafo North project in Ghana on 23 October 2025, bringing a new gold mine into production roughly 30km from its long-running Ahafo South operation. The company's third-quarter results said the mine would add profitable ounces over an initial 13-year mine life.

Filling the gap left by Ahafo South

The timing matters because output at Ahafo South has been sliding as planned: attributable gold production there fell to 145,000oz in the third quarter of 2025, from 197,000oz in the second quarter, as mining wound down at the Subika open pit in July. Newmont has guided that lower ounces from Ahafo South in 2026 would be largely replaced by new, lower-cost production from Ahafo North, effectively passing the baton between the two mines within the same complex.

Ghana's biggest recent gold investment

Newmont has previously said the project represented a $900m investment and would employ around 1,000 permanent workers once fully operational, with production expected to build from roughly 50,000oz in its first partial year to an annual range of 275,000-325,000oz. Speaking at the mine's inauguration, chief executive Tom Palmer described the Ahafo North and Ahafo South operations as cornerstones of Newmont's global portfolio and argued that fiscal certainty and equitable taxation would be needed to keep attracting mining capital to Ghana, contrasting the country's investment climate with tightening fiscal regimes in some neighbouring states. Newmont produced around 800,000oz in Ghana in 2024, a figure that predates any contribution from Ahafo North.

What happens next

With commercial production declared, the focus shifts to ramping Ahafo North toward its steady-state output range through 2026, while Ahafo South continues mining lower-grade ore following the Subika pit's closure. Newmont's later disclosures on quarterly production and costs at the two mines will show how smoothly that handover proceeds, and whether the 13-year mine life estimate holds up as more of the orebody is defined through continued drilling.

Part of a broader Ghana footprint

Ahafo North joins Ahafo South as the second major mine in Newmont's Ahafo complex, reinforcing Ghana's position as one of the company's core operating jurisdictions after three decades of continuous production in the country. The project's commissioning also comes against the backdrop of Newmont's 2024 sale of its separate Akyem mine to China's Zijin, which narrowed the company's Ghanaian footprint to the Ahafo complex alone even as it expanded that complex with a second producing mine.

Sources

• Newmont Corporation (SEC 8-K exhibit): Newmont Reports Third-Quarter 2025 Results, 23 Oct 2025
• Miningmx: Newmont CEO says Ghana's fiscal stability key, 31 Oct 2025

Photo: Inside the open-pit workings of Newmont's Ahafo gold mine complex in Ghana. The EITI, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.