The expected production of offshore gold mines is further strengthened, and ZHAOJIN MINING (01818) is steadily advancing the project schedule, releasing positive signals.

The clock has turned to July, marking the end of the first half of the year. For ZHAOJIN MINING (01818) which is currently in the process of accelerating its "gold digging", this period may have a more unusual significance than before. Recently, ZHAOJIN MINING's "Pearl" sea gold mine project reached a key milestone after half a year. The sea gold mine project is designed to have a processing capacity of 3.96 million tons per year (12,000 tons per day) for an intelligent ore dressing production line. On the last day of June, the project officially started the water-linked test run. This also means that the expected production start of the project will be further strengthened, and from then on, the sea project will gradually transition from the construction period to the production period. The above-mentioned 3.96 million tons/year ore dressing system adopts advanced "SABC grinding + flotation" process, and its processing capacity is at the forefront of the domestic gold industry. Not only that, in terms of adaptability to ultra-deep wells and green recycling process, its equipment selection, system design, and technical integration all have leading advantages, reaching the first-class level of single-line processing capacity of gold mines globally. During this water-linked test run, ZHAOJIN MINING strictly followed the "four-step promotion method" and successfully overcame the two major challenges of large-volume concrete one-time pouring and corrosion protection in the high-corrosion environment of coastal mines. It is worth mentioning that this is the first case in China to successfully achieve large-volume concrete one-time pouring in a gold mine, with a concrete one-time pouring volume exceeding 4420 cubic meters and an accuracy of 2mm; in addition, the company's comprehensive corrosion protection system has technical characteristics such as high resistance to halogen and abrasion, which can greatly improve the efficiency and service life of equipment operation, laying a solid foundation for subsequent large-scale production. Looking at the long term, since its establishment, the sea gold mine project has achieved breakthroughs at multiple key points. For example, in terms of construction, after all five vertical shafts were drilled through in 2024, by late May this year, the last kilometer of the "five vertical shafts and one inclined shaft" project under the sea was also successfully drilled through, solving ventilation and transportation issues for underground construction. Another example is in tunneling, at the end of last year, two TBM (full-face hard rock tunnel boring machines) "Haiyue No. 1" and "Haiyue No. 2" were simultaneously launched at a depth of one kilometer under the sea in the sea gold mine project, not only overcoming the deep-sea and deep-well engineering construction challenges of high temperature, high humidity, and high salt faced by the sea gold mine, but also filling the technical gap of TBM mining in deep-buried metal mines in China, and in fact, pushing the entire gold mining industry towards automation, unmanned operation, and intelligence. ZHAOJIN MINING has successively made significant breakthroughs in the construction of the sea gold mine project, the direct reason behind which is its top-down design, positioning the sea project as the number one project during the company's "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period. As China's largest single gold mine and the first offshore gold discovery, the sea gold mine has rich gold resources, prominent ore grade advantages, and significant potential for production increase. After the overall production is achieved, the sea gold mine will produce over 15 tons of gold annually, not only consolidating its position as a world-class single gold mine, but also significantly boosting ZHAOJIN MINING's overall gold production and sales levels. Starting from this ore dressing water-linked test run, it is anticipated that ZHAOJIN MINING will achieve the established goal of completing the construction and production of the sea gold mine by the end of 2027. In recent years, with the rise of trade protectionism in the Western world led by the United States, and the complexity and uncertainty in the global economic and trade environment, the price of gold has repeatedly hit new highs, continuously breaking historical records. In the midst of this, ZHAOJIN MINING, which already has the high-quality gold mine of the sea gold mine, is not complacent, but instead seizes opportunities and invests with greater enthusiasm in the global "gold digging" business. In addition to ensuring the timely production of the sea gold mine, ZHAOJIN MINING has also deeply implemented the "dual H" strategic layout of "half domestic, half foreign" in recent years, acquiring gold mines in places like Abuja and Komahong in Africa, and basically establishing a global resource network. It is understood that the Abuja gold mine has already stabilized production, the construction of the new crushing system project has effectively increased ore processing capacity, and the feasibility study of the APG second mine is expected to contribute to long-term increment; while the Komahong gold mine is located in the gold metal zone of Sierra Leone in Africa, which is a friendly country to China, and the mine is a large-sized mine with good exploration prospects. With operations in both domestic and foreign markets, ZHAOJIN MINING is appearing as a proactive gold mining enterprise in the bull market of gold. From a capital market perspective, considering that gold has both monetary, financial, and hedging attributes, it can be considered as a scarce investment in today's era, with high certainty of continuing high gold prices in the future; for the company itself, with outstanding resource endowment and orderly advancement in the construction of the sea gold mine project, and vigorously developing overseas resource maps with an international perspective, multiple potential incremental projects currently in hand are expected to bring substantial performance. Given all these points, investors may need to quickly "update" their assessment of the value of ZHAOJIN MINING, as the "gold content" of the company's future performance is still expected to be highly promising.