Newmont Cuts 2026 Gold Output Guidance as Canadian Mine Faces Underground Flooding
May 5, 2026 — Newmont Corporation announced on Tuesday that it is revising its full-year 2026 gold production guidance downward by approximately 200,000 attributable ounces, citing an ongoing underground flooding event at its Eleonore mine in the James Bay region of Quebec. The mine, which produced roughly 290,000 ounces in 2025, has suspended underground mining operations while the company assesses damage and pumps water from affected levels. Open-pit and surface operations at the site remain unaffected.
The company now expects to produce between 5.4 million and 5.6 million ounces of gold in 2026, down from prior guidance of 5.6 million to 5.8 million ounces. Newmont said it expects operations at Eleonore to resume progressively over the coming six to ten weeks, though that timeline remains subject to the pace of dewatering and a subsequent safety review by Quebec's mining regulator, the Ministere des Ressources naturelles et des Forets.
A Pattern of Supply Disruptions in 2026
The Eleonore setback is the latest in a series of unplanned supply interruptions affecting gold production globally this year. In February, Barrick Gold disclosed lower-than-expected throughput at its Pueblo Viejo operation in the Dominican Republic due to processing bottlenecks. In March, AngloGold Ashanti reported a fatal incident at its Tropicana mine in Western Australia that resulted in a temporary work stoppage. And in April, junior producer Endeavour Mining flagged geotechnical instability at its Ity mine in Cote d'Ivoire that reduced recoveries for the quarter.
Taken together, these events are reinforcing a market narrative that has been building for several years: the easy ounces have largely been mined, and sustaining global gold output at current levels requires increasingly complex and capital-intensive operations in more challenging geological and logistical environments. The World Gold Council estimates that industry-wide all-in sustaining costs rose approximately 8% in 2025 and are on pace for a further increase this year.
Labor Tensions Emerging at South African Platinum Mines
Separately, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union declared a dispute with Sibanye-Stillwater on Tuesday over proposed shift restructuring at two of the company's platinum group metals operations in South Africa's Rustenburg belt. The union, which represents a significant share of underground workers at those sites, argues the proposed changes would effectively reduce take-home pay for entry-level employees by between 12% and 15% despite maintaining nominal wage rates.
Sibanye-Stillwater said it is committed to the dispute resolution process and does not expect any impact on production in the near term. However, analysts noted that prolonged negotiations or work-to-rule actions could weigh on platinum and palladium output at a time when South African supply is already constrained by aging infrastructure and persistent power reliability issues from national utility Eskom.
New Deposit Discovery in Yukon Lifts Junior Sector
On a more constructive note, Vancouver-based explorer Aurion Resources reported an intercept of 18.4 grams of gold per tonne over 14.6 metres at its Risti project in the Yukon Territory, calling it the highest-grade result to date in the program. The company is drilling a newly identified structural corridor that its geological team believes could host a series of high-grade lenses at depth. While the discovery is at an early stage and years away from any production decision, it generated notable interest in the junior exploration market and lifted Aurion shares by more than 30% on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Supply Outlook Implications
The cumulative effect of these developments is a tighter-than-expected near-term supply picture for gold and platinum group metals. Newmont's guidance cut alone removes meaningful tonnage from the market in a year when mine supply was already projected to grow only modestly. For investors, the implications are straightforward: the supply side of the fundamental equation is providing incremental support to prices even as macroeconomic uncertainty and dollar strength create headwinds on the demand side. Whether that support is sufficient to drive prices higher in the short term will depend heavily on how quickly producers can resolve the operational issues now accumulating across the sector.