Harmony production to plunge
The miner will close mines in SA in the next five years if the rand gold price does not rise, and is counting heavily on its undeveloped, 50%-owned Wafi-Golpu to be a cash spinner
Harmony Gold faces an alarming drop in production in the next five years as it moved to reassure investors that it had a stream of projects that would fill the gap before its large Wafi-Golpu copper and gold mine in Papua New Guinea returned output of more than 1-million ounces a year. According to Harmony’s data, it will maintain annual output for the next five years at or about its 1.5-million ounces target, which it is close to meeting with its new Moab Khotsong mine in SA that it bought from AngloGold Ashanti for $300m and the $175m restart of its Hidden Valley mine in Papua New Guinea. But then production falls off a cliff as it closes at least four old SA mines and the gold coming from tailings retreatment diminishes quickly. This will leave the company with what CEO Peter Steenkamp called “a gap” on Tuesday as output falls to below 500,000oz in financial 2026 just as the Wafi-Golpu mine starts, rapidly replacing SA as Harmony’s key source of gold from 2029. Steenkamp played d...
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