For more than two decades, gold miners have tried to conduct business using a model regarded by several analysts as fundamentally wrong, a model whereby miners aim to grow yearly revenue at all costs, driven by increasing output and replacing reserve and resource bases. However, despite much higher gold prices for over a decade from 2003 onwards, declining output, stagnant or dwindling reserves and resources, negative earnings and massive asset write-offs have proven that this business model is an abject failure, author of the Mercenary Geologist website Mickey Fulp tells Mining Weekly.
