This latest production shutdown by the US Mint also comes on the back of other recent production shutdowns and production scale-backs that have affected everything from the Royal Canadian Mint in Ottawa, to the world’s largest gold refineries in Switzerland, and to South Africa’s Rand Refinery, restricting further the already constrained bullion supply chain globally. While some of the Swiss refineries such as PAMP and Argor-Heraeus have restarted production, this is to a limited extent, and the physical bullion supply chain still remaining challenging.

As a reminder, all of this is happening in an environment of continued enormous demand for gold bullion coins and other physical precious metals, which has led to strong premiums on precious metals bars and coins above the spot prices that the London and New York bullion banks are generating through their relentless synthetic and derivative paper gold churning.

Three of the world’s biggest gold refineries said they will partially reopen after a two week closure that disrupted global supply of the metal.

Three of the world’s largest gold refineries said on Monday they had suspended production in Switzerland for at least a week after local authorities ordered the closure of non-essential industry to curtail the spread of the coronavirus.

After flat-lining over the last several years, gold mine output fell by 1% in 2019. This is further evidence that we could be heading into a long-term and perhaps irreversible decline in gold mine production.

According to the World Gold Council, total gold mine output in 2019 came in at 3,463.7 tons.

Gold production has fallen 2 percent in the first five months of 2017 from the same period a year ago, Hynes added, citing data from the World Bureau of Metal Statistics. Production in the month of May alone was down 3.1 percent from a year ago.

Have we indeed reached mined peak gold production? With future mines being on average much lower grade then mines currently in production, at the very least, considering it takes up to 20 years from discovery to production, it’s not hard to believe we are have reached peak mined gold for this mining cycle.

China is way ahead in gold production -- 453 metric tons in 2016. And Russia isn't far behind second-place Australia with 288 metric tons.

"The analysis of the current situation and the available data make it possible to suppose that the total amount of gold production in Russia will reach 400 tonnes, and increased gold reserves may allow to preserve the growth rates until 2050,"

China, the world's top gold miner and consumer, produced 450.05 tonnes of the precious metal in 2015, down 0.4 percent from a year earlier, the country's gold industry body said on Wednesday.

Consumption rose 3.7 percent to 985.9 tonnes, driven by a recovery in jewellery manufacturing and consumption, the China Gold Association said.

The cliff appears to be imminent. According to numerous professional estimates, gold output will top out in 2015 or 2016 and then go into decline for several years at least. Using consensus figures,

Goldcorp estimates that global production will drop six per cent in the next three years, and almost 18 per cent in the next nine years.