Voluntary workforce turnover fell to 4% from 8% the prior year, a labour retention signal alongside the operational changes
Decision Focus
Torex Gold released its 2025 Responsible Gold Mining Report in May 2026, covering operations at its Morelos Complex in Guerrero, Mexico. The headline figure — a 68% single-year reduction in Scope 1 GHG emissions relative to 2024 — is attributed directly to the completed transition from open-pit to underground mining through the Media Luna project, combined with additional diesel reduction measures. For Mining Operations Directors evaluating long-range mine planning against emerging decarbonization obligations, the Torex dataset is worth reading as an early operational signal, not just an annual ESG disclosure.
90-Second Brief
Now, torex Gold’s Morelos Complex completed its shift to underground operations through Media Luna, with the 2025 report documenting the emissions outcome as a direct consequence of that transition. Water recycling reached 83%, up from 58% in 2024, driven by new circuits built as part of the underground development. An 8.45-megawatt solar plant was commissioned during the year. Voluntary workforce turnover fell to 4% from 8% the prior year, a labour retention signal alongside the operational changes.
What Is Really Happening?
The emissions reduction reported by Torex reflects a structural change in how energy is consumed across the mine. Open-pit operations are diesel-intensive by design: long haul distances, high strip ratios, and large surface fleets burning fuel at every bench cycle. Underground operations reduce surface haulage significantly and allow a different energy mix — including fixed infrastructure powered from grid or on-site generation — to progressively replace mobile diesel loads.
The 8.45-megawatt solar plant commissioned at Morelos directly supports this energy rebalancing. As the underground operation stabilises, fixed electrical infrastructure takes on a greater share of the energy load previously carried by the open-pit fleet. Fewer diesel truck cycles combined with more fixed electrical plant is what produces the Scope 1 reduction Torex is reporting — not a single technology swap, but a system-level change in the mine’s energy architecture.
The water recycling improvement follows a parallel logic. Media Luna’s underground workings required new water circuits and pumping infrastructure. That infrastructure, once built, enables higher recirculation rates across the whole complex. The jump from 58% to 83% water reuse represents a genuine operational capability improvement embedded in development capital, not a reporting reclassification, according to the company’s own disclosure.
What this illustrates is that mine-sequence decisions — specifically the timing and engineering design of a pit-to-underground transition — carry embedded decarbonisation and water outcomes that are rarely quantified during the planning phase. Torex’s 2025 data provides one of the few public, operational-scale examples of those outcomes measured across a single transition year.
Why It Matters for Mining Operations Directors
The direct implication is that mine plan sequencing and emissions trajectory are now linked in a way that regulators and project lenders are beginning to require disclosure on. If your operation is approaching the end of an open-pit phase or evaluating an underground cutback decision, the environmental outcomes of that choice — not just the production and cost economics — belong in the business case.
The Torex numbers are specific to one operation in one jurisdiction. Transitions at higher-strip or more remote operations will produce different ratios. But the directional signal holds: reducing surface diesel consumption through sequence change is a faster near-term Scope 1 lever than waiting for battery-electric fleet adoption at scale across the whole mobile fleet.
The water recycling outcome also has a capital integration implication. The infrastructure enabling the 83% reuse rate was built as part of Media Luna’s development scope, not funded as a standalone environmental compliance project. Operations planning brownfield underground development have a window to embed water circuit upgrades into development capital before the production ramp — compressing the cost and avoiding a retrofit under operating pressure later.
Workforce retention figures also warrant a separate read. Voluntary turnover halving to 4% during a major operational transition — in Guerrero, not an easy operating environment — suggests that transition management, anchored by strong local hiring with 39% of the workforce drawn from immediate host communities, can stabilise a site that might otherwise fragment under construction-to-production change pressure.
Forward View
Torex has stated confidence that it will meet or exceed its 2030 target to reduce absolute Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 10% against a 2021 baseline, even as Media Luna North comes online. If that trajectory holds through a growth phase, it would represent one of the few documented cases where a gold producer’s emissions intensity improved through production expansion rather than curtailment.
The first disclosure of Scope 3 emissions in 2025 opens a dimension worth tracking separately. Scope 3 reporting at mine level remains early-stage across the sector, and how Torex’s inventory develops in subsequent years — particularly for purchased consumables, contractor activity, and concentrate transport — will indicate whether the full-chain picture is consistent with the Scope 1 gains at site.
Procurement localisation reaching 95% in Mexico, with 20% directed to Guerrero-based suppliers, has an operational resilience reading beyond the social licence framing. Local supply chains shorten logistics lead times for consumables and maintenance inputs — a supply availability factor with direct fleet and plant uptime implications for remote underground operations.
What Is Still Uncertain
The Torex figures are self-reported in an annual ESG disclosure. Whether the 68% Scope 1 reduction is normalised for production volume — making it transferable as a benchmark to operations with different throughput or mine geometry — is not stated in the available source material. Operations in jurisdictions with different grid emission factors will also see different Scope 2 outcomes from equivalent infrastructure transitions.
The durability of the water recycling improvement is also unconfirmed over a longer horizon. Underground mines frequently encounter ground conditions or water ingress scenarios that alter circuit performance. The 83% figure reflects the first full year of the new configuration; multi-year trend data would be needed before treating it as a stable operating baseline rather than a first-year result.
One Question for Your Team
If your mine plan includes a pit-to-underground transition or a major underground development in the next five years, has your technical services team modelled the Scope 1 emissions and water recycling outcomes of that transition — and if not, what would it take to add that quantification to the current planning cycle?
Sources
- Mexicobusiness — Torex Gold Advances ESG Goals as Media Luna Drives Growth (Link)
