GOLD FIELDS
New South Deep plan helps turn first profit
Gold Fields’s plan for higher growth entails a completely mechanised mine
Gold Fields believes it has a plan and the people to start paying back the R31bn investment in the South Deep mine, which has been an underperforming asset since it was bought in 2007. In the nine-odd years since the mine was bought from Western Areas and Canada’s Placer Dome, Gold Fields has struggled to find the right mining plan for a massive underground ore body that ranges in width from 2m to 120m thick, lying more than 2.5km underground. In the first strategy, Gold Fields developed in 2009, the intention was to extract 750,000oz-800,000oz of gold a year, but a number of snags delayed the plan. This led investors to wonder whether Gold Fields could bring the asset to account, having sunk R29bn into buying it and investing in infrastructure. A second plan was drawn up, which entailed a completely mechanised mine extracting ore from vast underground voids. "This is probably the best plan we’ve seen at South Deep in a number of years and growth rates of 10% per annum are very achi...
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