A Journey To Senegal
8th October 2025
After our welcome briefing, combined with breakfast at the hotel, we headed to a much smaller airport for the flight to the Sabodala-Massawa Mine, around 400 miles inland from the capital. But we were on 'Senegal time' - meaning things sometimes run a little more slowly than planned.
While we waited for the propeller plane to be prepared, we had time to get to know the other people on the trip. It was a diverse group, including well-known jewellery editors and writers from both the UK and the US, as well as three of us involved in jewellery design and production, including myself from Boodles. The common denominator was that we all use SMO gold in our jewellery.
“I can’t understand why everyone doesn’t get involved with SMO Gold - it just makes sense to source your gold from a mine you know is doing good and having a positive social impact on the local community. That’s what we’ve found so interesting and inspiring.”
As we came in to land in Sabodala, we could make out a few prominent features, though the landscape was largely bush and scrub, interspersed with small villages. After dropping our things off, Archie and I asked for a jeep to take us into the mining area - determined to use every spare minute to document the trip. That first outing gave us fantastic drone footage and our first encounter with a large troop of baboons. Temperatures were in the mid-30s and expected to climb higher the next day.
From there, we visited the processing plant, where temperatures had now reached the mid-40s. The world-class plant was divided into two sections: one using the traditional method of extracting gold from ore, and the other using a state-of-the-art method called Biox, which uses bacteria to support extraction. Interestingly, both methods produce the same amount of gold each day. Around 2,000 people work on the mine site, though only a handful can access the high-security room where the refined gold is presented in its finished form.
We were fortunate to be in that room at the right moment to witness the ‘gold pour’, and after watching the engineer stoke the furnace to 1,200°C - hot enough for the gold to melt and pour - we saw a single 15-kilogram block of gold cast before our eyes. We were able to hold it just minutes after the pour. Coincidentally, the gold price had hit a world record the day before, breaking through $3,000 for the first time. It was an extraordinary moment at the heart of a truly global industry.
While mining is not inherently ‘sustainable,’ witnessing the responsible use of Single Mine Origin (SMO) gold showed how it can create jobs, support communities and bring lasting positive change - something we at Boodles are extremely proud to support. The memories of that trip, the people I met and the impressive mining operation will stay with me for a very long time. I am confident that the mine’s positive social impact will last for generations, and well beyond the life of the mine. However, the food that I took home from the market garden has long since been eaten!
My thanks go to the Betts family, who are responsible for SMO gold, and to all the workers at The Endeavour Mine who made us feel so welcome in Sabodala.
James Amos, Managing Director of Boodles
Single Mine Origin Gold
Boodles is proud to have a unique partnership with Single Mine Origin (SMO) Gold, a division of Betts Metals which enables us to know exactly which small selection of SMO approved mines our gold comes from.