COMPANY COMMENT: The painful closure of Sibanye’s Cooke shafts
Hopefully there’s a credible operator to step in, buy the Cooke mines and save some jobs
Sibanye-Stillwater has finally cut its losses at the Cooke mines near Johannesburg at the expense of thousands of jobs for its employees and contractors.The effect on those losing their jobs is devastating, particularly at year’s end when nobody is really hiring. These are not decisions taken lightly, but the argument for closing the remaining three Cooke shafts is incontrovertible. The shafts were deep in the red, running at an unsustainable loss for a long period, a difficulty compounded by hundreds of illegal miners who invaded the underground workings. Sibanye CE Neal Froneman has been clear that the target of the Cooke assets was not the underground mine but the surface infrastructure of enormous tailings dumps bearing gold and uranium and the uranium plant at the fourth mothballed Cooke shaft. While Sibanye might not have been able to make the four shafts profitable under the tough and veteran leadership of Froneman, there might be another party out there that could — a compan...
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