⚠ Replacement Is Getting Harder for the Whole IndustryModerate threat
Barrick Mining (B) — threat to the moat
A 67 percent rise in the gold price produced a 1 percent rise in world mine production -- inelastic supply supports the price and makes replacement harder at the same time.
Global mine production reached a record 3,671.6 tonnes in 2025 and grew 1 percent1. That figure is worth pausing on: a 67 percent rise in the dollar gold price over the period produced a 1 percent supply response.
It is the clearest available evidence that gold supply is inelastic, which is generally cited as good news for miners — and it is also evidence of the thing this page is about. If record prices, record cash flow and an industry desperate to grow can only lift production by a percent, then finding and permitting new ounces has become genuinely difficult. Major discoveries are rarer, the easy ground has been walked, permitting timelines have lengthened everywhere, and a new mine now takes the better part of a decade from discovery to first pour.
For Barrick this is a shared problem rather than a company-specific one, which changes the analysis in an important way: the industry's difficulty in replacing ounces supports the gold price and therefore Barrick's revenue, while simultaneously making Barrick's own replacement harder. The two effects do not cancel; they arrive on different timescales.
Fourmile is the answer the company points to, and it is a genuine one — a discovery of the calibre that changes a portfolio rather than maintaining it.
The number to watch is the reserve replacement ratio net of price-assumption changes. Anything below one, sustained, means the company is liquidating rather than operating.
- ReportedWorld mine production reached a record 3,671.6t in 2025 and grew 1%, while the US dollar gold price rose 67% over the period.World Gold Council, Gold Demand Trends Q4 and Full Year 2025 — total gold demand including OTC exceeded 5,000t for the first time, worth an unprecedented US$555bn (+45%), with the LBMA gold price setting 53 new all-time highs during 2025; the annual average price was US$3,431.5/oz (+44%) and the Q4 average a record US$4,135.2/oz (+55%). Supply: mine production a record 3,671.6t (+1%), net producer hedging -73.6t, recycled gold 1,404.3t (+3%) — described as a relatively muted response to a 67% increase in the US dollar gold price — for total supply of 5,002.3t. Demand: jewellery fabrication 1,638.0t (-19%) and jewellery consumption 1,542.3t (-18%) with jewellery demand value up 18% to a record; bar and coin 1,374.1t (+16%), a 12-year high; ETFs and similar products +801.2t against -2.9t in 2024, the second strongest year on record; central banks and other institutions 863.3t against 1,092.4t, at the upper end of the expected range, historically elevated and geographically widespread but slowed from their recent pace — FY2025 · publ. 2026-01-29 · source ↗