Gold has always attracted attention. For centuries, people have gone to extreme lengths to find and extract it, and even today, it remains one of the most valuable and sought-after resources on Earth. But the biggest source of gold today isn’t treasure chests or rivers, it’s industrial-scale mining.
The largest gold mines in the world produce millions of ounces every year, worth billions of pounds. The size and wealth of a gold mine is usually measured by how many ounces it produces annually. With gold currently valued at around £1,825 per ounce, these mines are worth a fortune.
According to Discovery Alert, the five richest and largest gold mines in the world together produced nearly 6.5 million ounces of gold in 2023, worth over £11 billion.
The Muruntau Mine in Uzbekistan is the biggest gold mine in the world by production.
It delivered an estimated 1.8 million ounces of gold in 2023, worth more than £3.3 billion.
The open-pit mine is located in Navoiy Province and stretches roughly 3.5 kilometres (2.2 miles) long and 600 metres (1,970 feet) deep.
It’s run by a state-owned company and is also one of the most efficient operations in the industry, using a massive conveyor belt system to transport ore from the pit to the processing plant.
The Carlin Mine in Nevada, USA, is second, producing around 1.59 million ounces of gold in 2023, worth approximately £2.9 billion.
The site includes multiple interconnected surface and underground mines and lies on the Carlin Trend, a 50-mile stretch famous for its rich gold deposits.
Mining there has been ongoing since the 1960s, and modern methods like roasting and pressure oxidation are used to process different types of ore.
Russia’s Olimpiada Mine, located in the cold Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk Krai, produced about 1.17 million ounces in 2023, valued at more than £2.1 billion.
What makes this mine unique is its ability to operate year-round despite winter temperatures dropping below -40°C, and its use of bacteria in a biotech process to extract gold from difficult ore.
The Cortez Mine, also in Nevada, produced 1 million ounces of gold in 2023, worth about £1.8 billion.
The site is known for its deep underground sections with very high gold content.
Some deposits contain over 10 grams of gold per tonne, which is five times higher than the global average.
The mine uses a mix of surface and underground methods and is part of the Nevada Gold Mines joint venture between Barrick and Newmont.
The Grasberg Block Cave Mine in Indonesia is fifth on the list. It produced 937,610 ounces of gold in 2023, worth around £1.7 billion.
Located high in the mountains of Papua at over 4,000 metres (13,100 feet), it was once the world’s largest open-pit mine but has now become one of the biggest underground mines.
While copper is its main output, the amount of gold extracted is still huge. The block caving method used there allows ore to be broken naturally by gravity and collected through deep tunnels.