EXCLUSIVE: Alamos Gold CEO – ‘Be a Good Investment, Not a Gold Call Option’

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John McCluskey has led Alamos Gold for more than two decades. He took a junior company worth less than $1 million and turned it into a gold producer worth more than $12 billion, with a clear path to 1 million ounces a year.

In an exclusive interview with Benzinga, McCluskey discussed the company’s current plans, his macro outlook and the legacy that sets Alamos apart in a sector known for chasing the next hot drilling result.

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Fixing the Bottlenecks

2026 has been a year of cleanup. At Island Gold, folding in the neighboring Magino mine, which came with the Argonaut Gold acquisition, took longer than planned. Inherited flaws and two harsh winters stretched the ramp-up to roughly 18 months, about one quarter longer than expected.

“Nothing really surprised us,” McCluskey says. “We knew going in that there were design flaws in the original flowsheet.”

The mill finally ran at 10,000 tons a day for all of last quarter. High-grade Island Gold ore recovers better there than at the old mill, and nearly half the gold comes out through the cheaper gravity circuit. The end goal is 20,000 tons a day.

While the Phase 3 shaft slipped by a quarter after crews hit an unmapped dike at 1,250 meters, McCluskey is unfazed. “We’ve got a 20-year reserve there; safety comes first,” he notes.

Young-Davidson took a bigger hit. In June, blasting on the 1,100-meter level caused seismic damage in a section that hadn’t been reinforced yet. No ounces were lost. Still, newly hired rock mechanics expert Dr. Robert Bewick, who spent 22 years at Golder, called it “a shot across the bow, not a hit to the ship.”

The mine is still running at 5,000 tons a day. Low-grade stockpiles keep the mill full while Alamos redesigns its approach for the next 15 years. Its hidden edge is tailings capacity, the region’s real bottleneck, which is secured by the TIA1 facility permitted in 2022.

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Wars, Sovereigns and Gold

Last December, at a bank lunch with other mining CEOs, McCluskey was one of the more conservative voices, calling for $4,800 gold as his 2026 target. Gold blew past $5,000 faster than he expected and ran toward $5,600 before pulling back, falling below $4,000 an ounce in late October.

What markets missed, he says, was how long-running conflicts would push nations to sell gold to finance their economies and wars. He points to Russia’s sale of roughly 160 to 165 tons to China.

“That’s indicative of what the market is absorbing,” McCluskey says. He sees a possible year-end rally, with the real push coming next year.

“Ultimately, I see the gold price going higher, but as a miner — you’ve got to be a good investment, not a gold call option.”

Why Island Gold Wins

Instead of joining bidding wars, Alamos wants to capitalize on these trends by betting on what it already owns and understands.

“People constantly underestimate what is going on at Island Gold,” McCluskey says, adding that the ore body could double.

Recent step-out drilling hit five meters true width, grading roughly 12 grams per ton. A 750-meter step-out to the east hit the structure again. Drills are now testing ground 7 kilometers east, near three past-producing mines that closed in 1942.

That approach has kept growth cheap. Since 2015, Alamos has grown reserves and resources from under 2 million ounces to 22 million to 23 million ounces, net of depletion, at around $30 per ounce.

“The in-situ value of our reserves now exceeds $80 billion,” he noted.

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The Chester Millar Playbook

McCluskey learned the business at Glamis Gold under the late Chester Millar, a Canadian Mining Hall of Fame inductee. The lessons he took went far beyond finding cheap ounces.

First, he ignored the siren’s call to diversify to silver or copper, citing complexities and geopolitical risks.

“Given our size, it was much more merit in staying focused on gold and safe political jurisdictions.”

Second, despite starting in Mexico, he shifted Alamos to Canada. Recalling a conversation with Franco-Nevada Corporation Chair Emeritus David Harquail, McCluskey learned that the world’s largest gold-focused royalty firm ranked Canada No. 1 for its legal mining framework.

Acknowledging the value of lessons from Millar’s generation, McCluskey says those “guys who knew how to do it right” shaped his operational philosophy.

“I didn’t invent it, but I adhere to that discipline, and it has produced great results,” he says. After all, he adds, “Investors want a management team that delivers.”

Photo: T. Schneider / Shutterstock

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