Canadian company eyes 1M gold ounces from Abu Marawat concession

Canadian mining company Aton Resources aims to extract more than 1 million ounces of gold from a new mining concession near its Abu Marawat project in Egypt’s Eastern Desert, a source familiar with the concession told Al Manassa.

Egypt had gold reserves of about 7.3 million ounces, equivalent to 227 tons, according to the latest update from the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources in 2024. The Sukari mine, Egypt’s largest gold deposit, held reserves of about 4.72 million ounces at the end of 2025.

In July, Abu Marawat Gold Mines, a subsidiary of Canadian company Aton Resources that oversees the concession, held a session to assess the environmental and social impact of a gold mining and extraction project in the Abu Marawat area of the Eastern Desert, covering about 57 square kilometers.

The source said production at Abu Marawat is expected to begin at the start of the 2027/28 fiscal year, with initial output of about 15,000 ounces of gold annually. Exploration will also target other minerals, including silver, copper and zinc.

The source, who requested anonymity, said Aton Resources had submitted a technical and financial proposal to Egypt’s Mineral Resources and Mining Industries Authority to obtain the concession. 

The company plans to add the area to its existing exploration and exploitation concessions in the Nubian Shield region of the Eastern Desert.

The targeted concession lies within the Abu Marawat mining area of the Nubian Shield, a geological formation stretching across parts of Egypt, Sudan and the Arabian Peninsula. The region is known for rock formations historically associated with gold and base-metal mining, the source said.

The Canadian company plans to invest about $150 million over three years to bring the Abu Marawat project into commercial production, while continuing exploration and prospecting in the area.

The company intends to develop the new concession in two phases. The first would yield 850,000 ounces of gold, followed by a second phase targeting another 200,000 ounces.

Egypt produced about 554,900 ounces of gold in the 2024/25 fiscal year, an increase of 15.5%. The government aims to raise annual gold production to about 800,000 ounces and attract roughly $1 billion in annual mining-sector investment by 2030, according to Bloomberg.