Ounces from fields of gold

SMALL mountains of orange and pink rock tower over the mines on the outskirts of Tarkwa, a Ghanaian town no bigger than Swords.

Looming next to markets and homes is Goldfields, Ghana’s largest gold-producing mine.

As the name suggests there is plenty of supply of the precious mineral.

So much so that long drains run for kilometres under the shadow of and next to the multi-coloured hills.

The open pipes collect minute liquid gold once it is run out of the rock with special chemicals and send it down to pregnant ponds.

The gold-tinted pools are dried out, leaving powder gold which is collected and melted into bars.

Goldfields is 240sq km in size, with conveyer belts carrying crushed rock running some 8km.

It produces 900,000 ounces of gold a year, almost half of what Ghana produces.

But a lot of digging is done before the rock reaches daylight above ground and the gold is dissolved.

Goldfields yields one gram of gold for every tonne of ore dug.

With its new mill finished this year and a workforce of over 5,000, it will be able to dig over one million tonnes of ore a year.

This project was funded by the SIMON CUMBERS MEDIA CHALLENGE fund, supported by Irish Aid.