B2Gold Brand Guidelines: A 2007 Vancouver Start From Bema Gold to Fekola & Goose

A company built from a takeover.

B2Gold was born out of another company’s sale. English Wikipedia says it was founded in 2007 by Clive Johnson and other former executives of Bema Gold, which was then being acquired by Kinross Gold. The terms of that deal let the new company take Bema’s exploration properties in Colombia and Russia.

It started as an explorer. Its initial public offering came in December 2007 on the TSX Venture Exchange, Wikipedia says, and in 2008 it moved up to the main Toronto Stock Exchange. Its press releases now give three listings: Toronto, the NYSE American and the Namibian Stock Exchange.

The company is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, where its announcements are datelined. A B2Gold statement quoted by North American Mining in October 2025 named him as president and chief executive.

Its name joins a letter, a numeral and the metal it mines, and it is written as a single word, B2Gold, in the company’s own releases.

Five mines, built by merger.

B2Gold grew by merging with smaller listed miners, and English Wikipedia sets out the sequence. In 2009 it became a producer by acquiring Central Sun Mining, which brought two mines in Nicaragua, El Limón and La Libertad. In 2011 it merged with Auryx Gold, gaining the Otjikoto project in Namibia. In 2012 it merged with CGA Mining, which owned the Masbate mine in the Philippines. In 2014 it merged with Papillon Resources and gained the Fekola property in Mali, near the border with Senegal.

Not every project went ahead. Wikipedia records that in 2013 B2Gold acquired Volta Resources for its exploration properties in Burkina Faso, and that the same year it lost an exploration property at Rancho Grande, known as El Pavón, in Nicaragua, after community opposition. At La Libertad, Wikipedia adds, the expanding workings required a neighbourhood of the town to be relocated.

The growth shows in the output figures Wikipedia gives: about 21,200 ounces of gold in 2009, its first year as a producer, and roughly 960,000 ounces in each of 2018 and 2019, once five mines were running.

Two of those projects it built itself. Otjikoto, in the Otjozondjupa region, reached commercial production in February 2015, Wikipedia says; it combines open pit and underground mining and has its own solar power plant. Fekola began production in November 2017 and became the company’s largest mine. The Nicaraguan mines were later sold to Calibre Mining, and Wikipedia dates that sale to 2019.

Mali brought a long negotiation. The Malian government delayed new mining permits while it audited the sector and applied a new Mining Code issued in 2023. On 12 September 2024, Miningmx reported that B2Gold had reached agreement with the government: the existing Fekola mine would stay under the 2012 code and its mining convention, while the Fekola Regional projects would come under the 2023 code and have their permits expedited; the state would keep its 20% interest in the Fekola complex, and outstanding tax and customs disputes dating from 2016 would be settled. On 31 July 2025, Miningmx reported that B2Gold said the government had approved the start of underground mining development at Fekola, which it owns 80% of.

Design and documentation.

Gold miners sell a metal that looks the same whoever digs it, so much of their visual identity is borrowed from the work itself. Their reports and websites return to a few images again and again: a doré bar being poured from a furnace, stacked bullion glowing under warm light, a headframe against the sky, and the long terraced walls of an open pit seen from the air.

Each region adds its own scenery. South African producers show the steel headframes of the Witwatersrand and underground stopes lit only by cap lamps; Australian miners show red earth and haul roads in the outback; Canadian companies increasingly show the Arctic, where Agnico Eagle’s Meadowbank mine poured Nunavut’s first gold bar in 2010, according to English Wikipedia, and where B2Gold’s Goose mine reached commercial production in October 2025. West African operations, such as B2Gold’s Fekola mine in Mali, bring savanna landscapes and the paperwork of new national mining codes.

Much of the industry’s printed identity sits in documents rather than products. Annual reports, sustainability reports and technical reports carry the logos, colours and photography; so do the slide decks shown to investors at gatherings such as the Denver Gold Forum in Colorado and Diggers and Dealers in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. Community programmes, safety campaigns and agreements with Indigenous partners appear prominently in that material, alongside the maps and drill sections that geologists read.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each company — where it began, how its name and ownership changed, and where its mines are — and attributes figures and claims to the sources that give them. The palettes and typefaces shown are our own unofficial interpretations, not the companies’ brand assets.

North to Nunavut.

The newest part of the company is in the Arctic. In April 2023, English Wikipedia says, B2Gold acquired Sabina Gold & Silver and with it the Back River Gold District in Nunavut, five blocks of mineral claims along a belt about 80 kilometres long. Its most advanced project, the Goose mine, reached commercial production on 2 October 2025, North American Mining reported on 8 October 2025, citing the company. In that statement Johnson thanked the company’s construction and operations teams and acknowledged its partner, the Kitikmeot Inuit Association. The mill had been fed mainly from the mined-out Echo open pit, the report said, and had run for 30 consecutive days at about two-thirds of its design capacity before the milestone was declared.

Wikipedia lists four operating mines as of 2026: Fekola in Mali, Masbate in the Philippines, Otjikoto in Namibia and Goose in Canada. It also records that B2Gold bought the Australian exploration company Oklo Resources in 2022.

B2Gold has also traded ground with a neighbour. On 20 April 2026 it announced an agreement to sell its 70% interest in Fingold Ventures, a joint venture whose exploration claims lie next to Rupert Resources’ Ikkari project in northern Finland, to Agnico Eagle; the sale was completed on 23 April 2026. The two companies also agreed to enter a non-exclusive collaboration agreement on knowledge sharing across their Nunavut operations, without any transfer of ownership.

For a design guide, B2Gold shows how a young company can build a name across four countries through mergers rather than a long history. Compare Kinross, the buyer of Bema Gold, and Endeavour Mining, another gold miner in West Africa. For this guide we use a laterite brown and a bar gold with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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