UK-headquartered gold offtake company, SignaFi has secured a $35-million credit facility from a consortium of British and United Arab Emirates investors to finance gold supply from organised artisanal and small-scale mining (ASGM) cooperatives in Africa and South America.

The facility is led by UAE-based Ronin Commercial Brokers LLC and is available for immediate drawdown.

It provides SignaFi with capital to expand operations with contracted suppliers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Zambia and South America, and to contract new cooperatives and aggregators.

SignaFi was founded in 2025 and is chaired by City veteran Stefan Allesch-Taylor. Its advisory board includes Ibukun Adebayo, formerly Global Head of Sustainable Finance and Investment Strategy at London Stock Exchange Group, and John Howchin, a board member of the United Nations-convened Global Tailings Management Institute and former Secretary-General of the Council on Ethics of the Swedish National Pension Funds.

The facility follows a long-term supply and capital partnership agreement SignaFi signed with PeaceGold Trading Company this year. PeaceGold works with 11 cooperatives representing approximately 25,000 miners in Ituri Province in the eastern DRC. Under the agreement, PeaceGold acts as an aggregator and export partner for its participating cooperatives, while SignaFi provides guaranteed offtake agreements at competitive pricing, giving cooperatives a greater share of the value of their gold.

PeaceGold was established in 2013 with the local nonprofit Conflict Resolution Center to help formalise artisanal mining and reintegrate former combatants into regulated work, including gold mining, as a way to reduce conflict.

According to the World Gold Council, global mined gold production is likely to plateau over the next few years, while ASGM already accounts for at least 20% of newly mined gold. Organised producers in the sector are held back by a lack of compliance capability and remain cut off from the capital, export corridors and offtakers that serve the rest of the industry.

Artisanal and small-scale mining now produces an estimated 20% of the world's gold, up from 4% in the 1990s, and is worth an estimated $100 billion annually at current prices, supporting the livelihoods of more than 15 million people worldwide. Yet much of the sector operates outside formal international supply chains.

Stefan Allesch-Taylor, Co-Founder and Executive Chair of SignaFi, said: "Artisanal miners produce one in every five ounces of new gold, yet most are shut out of the formal market, without the capital, compliance support or buyers that the rest of the industry takes for granted. That leaves the door open to illicit buyers and exploitative practices.

This facility empowers cooperatives that have done the hard work of organising, and gives them a direct, traceable route to the world gold market. We have moved fast because the demand is there on both sides: cooperatives want a legitimate route to market, and refiners want traceable supply".

Gerges Raphael, Principal of Ronin, said: "Artisanal gold has long been seen as too opaque for serious capital. SignaFi has changed that equation. We see this as the start of a significant new channel for responsibly sourced gold, and we are pleased to back SignaFi as it scales".

The facility funds purchases from existing cooperatives rather than new mining, so it does not add to overall gold supply. Its significance lies in changing who buys artisanal gold, not how much is mined. The deal is small relative to the global gold market but targets a large share of supply that currently operates outside formal channels.