UK-headquartered gold offtake company SigraFi has secured a $35 million credit facility from British and UAE investors led by UAE-based Ronin Commercial Brokers LLC. The financing will support gold purchases from existing suppliers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia and South America, while helping SigraFi sign agreements with additional cooperatives and aggregators.
SigraFi buys gold through multi-year contracts with organised artisanal and small-scale mining cooperatives. In eastern DRC, it works with PeaceGold and 11 cooperatives representing 25,000 miners in Ituri province. PeaceGold, founded in 2013 with the local nonprofit Conflict Resolution Center, helps formalize artisanal mining and reintegrate former combatants into regulated work, including gold mining.
PeaceGold aggregates gold and supports exports for participating cooperatives, while SigraFi offers guaranteed offtake agreements at competitive prices. The arrangement gives the cooperatives a direct route to buyers and a larger share of the value of their production.
Artisanal and small-scale mining accounts for at least 20% of newly mined gold, while global mined-gold output is expected to plateau over the next few years. Organised producers in the sector remain constrained by limited compliance capacity and restricted access to capital, export routes and established buyers. SigraFi said its financing is intended to help address that gap by connecting organised cooperatives with formal gold markets.