Ivory Coast Approves Gold Refinery Targeting 100 Tonnes by 2030

Ivory Coast produced roughly 60 tonnes of gold in 2025 and ranked eighth in Africa. Yet its government has just authorised a refinery built to process the country’s entire industrial output, and it has put a firm number on the ambition: 100 tonnes a year by 2030.

The distance between those two figures is the story. On 16 September 2026, Mines Minister Mamadou Sangafowa-Coulibaly announced that the Société Ivoirienne des Métaux Précieux (SIMEP) refinery, approved by Council of Ministers decree on 14 September 2026, will be operational in the first half of 2027 and capable of treating up to 100 tonnes of gold per year. US financial services firm StoneX Group has been named to market the refined output internationally.

The timing is not incidental. The refinery announcement lands just as first gold pour approaches at Montage Gold’s Koné mine, giving anyone tracking West African gold supply two moving parts to watch at once. What follows maps the specific projects, timelines, and numbers that will determine whether this ambition holds.

A refinery sized to match Ivory Coast’s entire mine output

The Council of Ministers signed off on SIMEP’s structure on 14 September 2026, and the scale of the decision becomes clear once the capacity number is set against the production target. This is not a plant with spare headroom built for a distant future. Its ceiling is calibrated to exactly where the government wants national output to be in 2030.

SIMEP is a public company with CFA 5 billion in share capital, with the refining unit itself costing approximately CFA 5 billion to build. The state and mining agency SODEMI hold 49% of the equity, and total national participation reaches 70%. The company carries four mandated functions:

• Operating semi-industrial mines
• Managing the National Gold Purchasing Counter
• Transforming and commercialising gold
• Building a strategic gold stock for the state

The refinery will sit in Abidjan and process up to 100 tonnes of gold per year at full capacity, according to Minister Sangafowa-Coulibaly, who set out the timing at a coordination meeting in Abidjan on 16 September 2026.

On the operational target Minister Sangafowa-Coulibaly told the Abidjan coordination meeting that the refinery is expected to be operational in the first half of 2027, running at a capacity designed to match Ivory Coast’s projected total industrial mine output.

That last point is the tell. Because the refinery’s capacity ceiling matches the 2030 production target tonne for tonne, the two commitments read as a single wager rather than two separate projects. If the mines underdeliver, the refinery runs below capacity. If the refinery slips, the extra output has nowhere to go. Investors should price that interdependency, not treat the two as independent bets.

The StoneX Group partnership, confirmed by Bloomberg reporting on 18 September 2026, answers the question that domestic refinery announcements across the region often leave hanging: who actually buys the gold. A named international marketing partner at this stage materially raises the refinery’s commercial credibility.

The mines that have to deliver: Koné and Yaouré in the production plan

A refinery needs feedstock, and two industrial projects are doing the heavy lifting. They matter in sequence. Montage Gold’s Koné mine is the near-term test of whether the roadmap is real, and Perseus Mining’s Yaouré expansion is the longer-run support that determines whether the 2030 number survives.

Koné is the more immediate catalyst. First gold pour through the oxide circuit is targeted for late Q4-2026, with the hard-rock comminution circuit scheduled for completion in Q2-2027. S&P Global Market Intelligence projected in April 2026 that Koné would produce around 266,175 ounces in 2027, after roughly 6,000 ounces during late-2026 commissioning.

Montage Gold’s Updated Feasibility Study describes Koné as a 16-year open-pit mine expected to produce more than 300,000 ounces per year across its first eight years. A GlobeNewswire release in January 2026 reported over 7.2 million construction hours worked, all 14 CIL tanks erected, and the ball mill delivered. The company’s Q2-2026 Activities Report in August 2026 confirmed the late Q4-2026 production date remains in place.

The Koné mine expansion spans a 16-year open-pit schedule with more than 300,000 ounces per year projected across the first eight years, making it the single largest contributor to any credible path toward the 2030 production target.

That first oxide-circuit pour is the earliest hard signal of whether the country’s production ramp is on schedule. Anyone tracking the output trajectory should treat it as the first concrete data point against the 2030 target.

Yaouré underground expansion: the longer-dated production support

Perseus Mining approved a US$124.6 million underground expansion at Yaouré in January 2025, a project set to extend mine life to at least 2035. As of July 2026, Mining Weekly reported a US$34 million drilling programme covering roughly 123 km actively underway, targeting resource extensions at ROZA and CMA Southwest.

Both projects sit beyond the exploration and feasibility phase, which shifts their risk profile relative to earlier-stage West African opportunities. The construction milestones at Koné and the capital already committed at Yaouré give investors concrete execution benchmarks to watch, not promises.

From 60 tonnes to 100: what the production gap actually requires

The starting point is well documented. Ivory Coast produced 59.33 tonnes in 2025, up from roughly 13.2 tonnes in 2012, according to World Gold Council data cited by Ecofin Agency on 18 September 2026. That climb ranked the country eighth in Africa last year, down from seventh in 2024 when output was 58 tonnes, per Sputnik Africa’s summary of World Gold Council figures.

The official forward projections are more modest than the headline ambition suggests. Director-General of Mines Seydou Coulibaly told Mining.com in June 2026 that output should reach around 62 tonnes in 2026, 63 tonnes in 2027, and 69 tonnes in 2028.

The official production projections to 2028 from Director-General Seydou Coulibaly top out at 69 tonnes, a figure that leaves a 31-tonne gap to the 2030 target that no currently scheduled project fully explains.

Line the numbers up and the problem sets itself. The official 2028 forecast of 69 tonnes sits 31 tonnes below the 2030 target of 100 tonnes. That means roughly 31 tonnes of new production has to appear in just two years, from projects that do not yet feature in the official projection range.

That 31-tonne gap is the single most important number for judging the credibility of the ambition, because it quantifies exactly how much undisclosed or unscheduled growth is being assumed.

The 2035 ambition in context Ivory Coast wants to be Africa’s largest gold producer by 2035. Ghana produced 192.4 tonnes in 2025 per World Gold Council data, which sets the true scale of the gap the country would need to close.

For investors, the practical takeaway is to separate production that is already underwritten by projects in execution, namely Koné and Yaouré, from the additional volume that depends on future project announcements, exploration success, or formalisation of artisanal mining. Those two categories carry fundamentally different risk profiles.

Regional momentum and the risks that could stall it

SIMEP is not an outlier. A clear regional pattern has taken hold, with West African governments pushing to capture more value by requiring gold to be refined at home before export. The precedents show both what works and what does not:

• Guinea: President Doumbouya announced an immediate ban on raw gold exports, requiring domestic refining into certified bullion. Its lesson for Ivory Coast is that mandates need credible refineries and enforcement behind them.
• Ghana: The Royal Ghana Gold Refinery was commissioned in late 2024, and from 1 September 2026 unrefined artisanal gold exports were banned. Ghana pairs refining with state pre-emption rights, offering the clearest working template.
• Tanzania: The Natural Resource Governance Institute warns its 2017 export ban on concentrates triggered investor disputes and underused plants, a cautionary case of policy outrunning capacity.

Guinea’s raw gold export ban offers the clearest cautionary parallel for Ivory Coast: President Doumbouya’s mandate moved faster than the refining infrastructure behind it, and the credibility gap between policy announcement and operational capacity is precisely the risk SIMEP must avoid.

Ivory Coast is signalling its own awareness of the governance stakes. On 17 September 2026, the National Security Council ordered a six-month suspension of artisanal mining permits, while a World Bank partnership with the World Gold Council, announced in July 2025, targets formalisation of the artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) sector.

The policy signal The National Security Council’s six-month suspension of artisanal mining permits on 17 September 2026, one day before the SIMEP coordination meeting, was no coincidence. It signals that the government sees the informal sector as both the biggest source of unrefined gold and the biggest governance risk to the refinery’s viability.

Two structural risks matter most for the investment case. The first is feedstock. A large share of the country’s gold currently moves through informal channels, and SIMEP needs reliable formal-sector supply from day one. The second is security. Research by Equal Access International flags a real risk of violent extremist infiltration into the ASGM value chain, and a 2023 Global Initiative report documented how artisanal mining in north-eastern border zones intersects with armed-group activity.

Whether SIMEP can secure consistent formal-sector feedstock is the commercial question that determines its viability, independent of mine output. Ghana’s model, combining state pre-emption rights with targeted export rules, is the clearest operational answer the region has produced so far.

What the 2027 refinery start will actually signal

Three variables will decide whether the 2030 target is a plan or a hope, and each has a checkable date attached. On-schedule SIMEP commissioning in the first half of 2027. A confirmed first gold pour at Koné in late Q4-2026. Demonstrable progress on ASGM formalisation to feed the refinery with formal-sector gold.

The 2027 refinery date is best read as the first real test of the government’s execution credibility, not the finish line. And the 31-tonne gap between the 2028 official projection of 69 tonnes and the 100-tonne target means fresh project announcements or exploration results will need to surface within the next 12-24 months for the ambition to stay credible.

Capital flows into West African gold assets are being reshaped by a broader ownership shift, with Chinese operators moving into positions vacated by withdrawing Western majors across the region, a dynamic that will influence which projects advance quickly enough to close Ivory Coast’s 31-tonne production gap.

For investors watching West African gold supply, the next six to nine months are the window in which execution either validates or undermines the production narrative. Here is what to track:

1. Koné first gold pour through the oxide circuit, targeted for late Q4-2026
2. SIMEP operational confirmation in the first half of 2027, with StoneX offtake in place
3. ASGM formalisation progress and concrete feedstock supply arrangements

If Koné pours on schedule and SIMEP opens on time, the story shifts from ambition to early execution. That shift, backed by Perseus’s Yaouré mine life running to at least 2035, is exactly what positioning decisions should be built to recognise.

This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Investors should conduct their own research and consult with financial professionals before making investment decisions. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Financial projections and production targets are subject to market conditions and various risk factors, and forward-looking statements are speculative and subject to change based on project execution and policy developments.