The Sukari mine or Alsukari mine (

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

: السكري ''Al-Sukkari'', Egyptian pronunciation: ''El-Sokkari'') is a

gold mine Gold Mine may refer to: *Gold Mine (board game) *Gold Mine (Long Beach), an arena *"Gold Mine", a song by Joyner Lucas from the 2020 album '' ADHD'' See also * ''Gold'' (1974 film), based on the novel ''Gold Mine'' by Wilbur Smith *Gold mining ...

located in the

Nubian Desert The Nubian Desert ( ar, صحراء النوبة, ''Şaḩrā’ an Nūbyah'') is in the eastern region of the Sahara Desert, spanning approximately 400,000 km2 of northeastern Sudan and northern Eritrea, between the Nile and the Red Sea. Th ...

Eastern Desert The Eastern Desert (Archaically known as Arabia or the Arabian Desert) is the part of the Sahara desert that is located east of the Nile river. It spans of North-Eastern Africa and is bordered by the Nile river to the west and the Red Sea and ...

near the

Red Sea The Red Sea ( ar, البحر الأحمر - بحر القلزم, translit=Modern: al-Baḥr al-ʾAḥmar, Medieval: Baḥr al-Qulzum; or ; Coptic: ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϩⲁϩ ''Phiom Enhah'' or ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϣⲁⲣⲓ ''Phiom ǹšari''; T ...

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

, in the south-east of the country in the

Red Sea Governorate Red Sea Governorate ( ar, محافظة البحر الأحمر ) is one of the 27 governorates (States) of Egypt. Located between the Nile and the Red Sea in the southeast of the country, its southern border forms part of Egypt's border with S ...

, 30 km south of

Marsa Alam Marsa Alam ( ar, مرسى علم ' , Classical Arabic ) is a town in south-eastern Egypt, located on the western shore of the Red Sea. It is currently seeing fast increasing popularity as a tourist destination and development following the openi ...

. It is exploited jointly by the Egyptian Ministry of Mineral Resources and

Centamin Centamin plc (, ) is a gold mining company focused on the Arabian-Nubian Shield. It has offices in London, UK; Mount Pleasant, Western Australia; and Alexandria, Egypt. Its registered office is in Jersey. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange ...

. It is Egypt's first modern gold mine, an industry considered to have scope for expansion in the country. Egypt was known in the ancient world as being a source of gold, and one of the earliest available maps shows a gold mine at this location. It is a combination of an

open-pit mine Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a borrow. This form of mining ...

and an underground mine, with estimated reserves of 15.4 million ounces of gold. The site is supplied by a 30 km long

pipeline Pipeline may refer to: Electronics, computers and computing * Pipeline (computing), a chain of data-processing stages or a CPU optimization found on ** Instruction pipelining, a technique for implementing instruction-level parallelism within a s ...

bringing water from the

History

The $265-million project began gold production in 2009 with 850 workers. The initial yield was 2 g/t, with future yields expected to rise to between 5 g/t and 10 g/t. In October 2012

's licence for the Sukarim mine was annulled by an Egyptian court, and in December operations were suspended over a payment dispute and exports halted. Within a week significant parts of the dispute with the Egyptian state were resolved and exports were resumed. By 2014 production had risen to 250,000 ounces in the first nine months, with a target figure for the entire year of 420,000 ounces.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sukari Mine Gold mines in Egypt Open-pit mines