Buenaventura Takes Off Gold Hedge

Compania de Minas Buenaventura, Peru’s largest publicly-traded precious metals mining company, says it has completely unwound its gold hedge book by releasing the fixed price of 782,000 gold ounces committed for years 2010 to 2012. Total payment for the transaction was $434m, which Buenaventura says will be financed via debt. The miner already eliminated 140,000 ounces from its 2010 gold commitments by paying $82.6m in cash last month. “After reducing the gold commitments in both transactions, which totaled 922,000 ounces, Buenaventura is now completely un-hedged,” says the firm.