New Zealand’s new gold rush

Sunday, 12 October 2025

As proposals for new gold mines explode across New Zealand, sparking criticism and controversy, a more fundamental question is being asked: Do we actually need any more gold? Mike White reports.

On a mid-winter Monday evening, the Tarras Community Centre was as far from an exhilarating goldrush as could be imagined.

Outside, the bedraggled remains of an Anzac Day wreath were propped against a wall like a sleeping drunk.

Inside, two Santana Minerals employees sat shrouded in coats, surrounded by information boards.

It was one of the Australian company’s regular drop-in sessions they’d been running for months as Santana promoted its plan to build a massive gold mine near the Central Otago village, spruiking it as New Zealand’s richest gold discovery on 40 years.

The room didn’t suggest impending riches: The lino floor, the servery hatch, the spare golf clubs for the nine-holer across the road, the homeless chilly-bin.

But the information boards promised astounding wealth just ahead, just around the corner, just over the hill.

Santana’s Bendigo-Ophir project would see four open-pit mines dug, the largest of which would be 1km wide and 200m deep.

There would also be underground tunnels, a 1km-long processing plant, a 2km-long tailings storage facility holding waste toxic sludge in perpetuity, and at least 14 years of round-the-clock industrial activity.

But the payoff would be huge, Santana promised. Nearly $7 billion in gold sales. About $2.5 billion in profits for shareholders. Almost $1.5 billion in taxes and royalties for the government.

Add in more than 360 jobs and all the flow-on benefits for local businesses, and the proposal might have seemed impossible to resist, for anyone visiting the drop-in session that night.

Nobody did, but hundreds had in the previous months.

They got a picture of prosperity.

But, as with all pictures, there was more beyond the frame.

And with this picture, it’s been particularly important to take a step back, to get a better view.

Another golden age?

New Zealand is experiencing a new gold rush.

In 2024, New Zealand Petroleum and Minerals, the government agency which regulates mining, received 447 applications for new minerals permits and changes to existing permits.

This was a 55% increase on 2023, and gold was a listed target in 380 (85%) of those applications.

In 2025, there have been 150 new minerals applications so far. Of these, 143 (95%) are targeting gold: 37 are for prospecting; 50 for more intensive exploration; and 56 for actual mining.

The bulk of these have been in Otago and the West Coast, but also include areas in Wellington, Southland, Tasman, Waikato, and Taranaki.

In the same period, there have been 207 applications to change conditions of existing permits - 189 (91%) of these were to do with gold.

So far this year, 267 applications for new gold mining activity, or changes to existing gold permits, have been granted.

Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment acting general manager of resource markets Kylie Smeaton says there is a “growing influx” of mining applications, headed by gold.

This can largely be explained by gold’s soaring price, which has doubled in the last two years, recently surging past NZ$6000 an ounce for the first time. It is currently sitting around $6900.

Smeaton says high gold prices can tip previously uneconomic areas into viable mining prospects.

They can also mean existing mines are extended, because it’s now worth mining surrounding areas.

But what’s it all for? Where’s all the gold going? And even more fundamentally - do we need it?

One of Santana’s information boards at the Tarras drop-in session outlined gold’s uses, including jewellery, mobile phones, and even space exploration.

But the reality is, most gold is used for adornment, or sits stored as bars in subterranean safes and vaults worldwide.

In 2024, just 6.5% of the nearly 5000 tonnes of gold mined and recycled globally was used for technology, including electronics (270 tonnes), and dentistry (9 tonnes).

About 40% was used for jewellery.

Around 24% went for investment in the form of bars and coins, and 21% went to central banks.

Just over a quarter of all gold used in 2024 had been recycled (the rest coming from new mining).

This has led to arguments that we don’t actually need new gold mines, given so much is already stored, doing nothing other than act as a reserve of wealth, and so much can be retrieved by improved recycling.

The total amount of gold held just by central banks around the world is about 35,000 tonnes. That’s enough gold to meet our technological needs, at current rates, for more than 100 years.

Within mining circles, gold is, somewhat ironically, seen as the industry’s least worthy sector, a proxy for greed or a store of wealth at best, with little practical purpose.

Other metals and minerals have crucial technological applications: Bauxite makes aluminium. Diamonds have uses well beyond engagement rings. Even coal is acceptable because it creates steel, with its innumerable practical uses.

International mining consultant and Tarras resident Chris Goddard says miners tell themselves they do it to help society.

“But gold miners are doing it to help the bankers. It won’t help you build a house.

“You don’t just mine for shits and giggles. You mine because someone needs that metal or mineral to keep society going.”

Being critical of being critical

Gold from Santana’s mine will be made into rough bars and shipped to the Perth Mint for refining. No value is added, making it the equivalent of mineral milk powder, according to critics.

But Massey University mining expert Professor Glenn Banks says gold mining is different to dairy - or other industries like fruit or wine production, or even tourism: You dig it up once, and then it’s gone, and there’s nothing left for future generations, except the environmental effects.

In January, the Government ignored official advice and controversially added gold and coal to the country’s list of “critical minerals”.

Banks says New Zealand is one of the only countries in the world that considers gold a “critical mineral”, and questions whether it is crucial to society.

“Personally, I don’t see gold as something we need vast quantities more of.”

But the country’s largest gold producer, OceanaGold, says it would be “unnecessary and unrealistic” to walk away from gold, leave it in the ground, and rely on current reserves and recycling.

The Canadian-based company operates the Waihi mine, as well as New Zealand’s largest gold mine, Macraes, near Palmerston. It has applied to expand its Waihi operation, and plans to extend the life of the Macraes mine, which began production in 1990, till 2030.

Alison Paul, its senior vice-president of legal and public affairs, says gold mining, like other primary production, provides export earnings, taxes, royalties, and employment for New Zealand.

“A halt on mining would bring significant losses to jobs and businesses in the communities where we operate, and those losses would not be replaced through an increase in second-hand jewellery, and bullion sales.”

Even with recycling accounting for a quarter of gold used, the price of gold continues to rise, she says.

“A theoretical global halt on mine production, even if possible, would drive up the price of gold still further for all users, technology included.”

Santana Minerals CEO Damian Spring says the arguments for mining gold are obvious.

“Because it generates economic benefits to the immediate region and nationally.

“The end use of that gold will be up to the refineries, who will on-sell it to whoever.”

Santana says it will shortly submit its application for the Bendigo-Ophir mine, using the Government’s new Fast-Track process, which speeds up the consenting process for such projects into a six-month period. If successful, Santana could begin constructing its processing plant early next year, and start mining in 2027.

Many see Santana’s proposal as a test case for other gold mines in the area, with numerous international companies already holding gold exploration and mining permits across Central Otago.

Some warn it will trigger gold mines from Wānaka to the Maniototo, home of many of Sir Grahame Sydney’s most famous paintings, and change the face of Central Otago forever.

Spring points out that gold mining began in the region in the 1860s, and is part of Central Otago’s history and culture.

“I believe, as a mining engineer of 30-plus years, this is an important industry and part of our society.

“For us, it’s gold. But in 20 years’ time, it might be a rare earth mineral that we need.

“And it’s important that we continue to capitalise on the resources we do have; maintain our intellectual property in terms of understanding what mining is, and how we mitigate its effect; and as the pendulum swings and there’s some other mineral that’s worthy of being mined, we can apply those skills.”