Implats pins hopes on extensive review to stimulate unprofitable shafts
Impala Platinum (Implats), the world’s second-biggest platinum miner, bumped its full-year refined platinum output down by 40,000oz because of problems with its furnaces. Implats is undertaking an extensive review of its shafts around the North West town of Rustenburg to cope with a low platinum group metal basket price and to develop a plan around its many unprofitable shafts. Nico Muller has taken over as CEO at Implats and is pushing his team hard on developing a new strategy, the outlines of which entail grouping shafts into three clusters, with the older, unprofitable shafts going into harvest mode, meaning no more capital will be spent on development and mining will focus on extracting what is available. The big mature mines will be restructured to be profitable and then there are the two new shafts that will deliver lower-cost production. "The elimination of high-cost production at Impala Rustenburg remains our key imperative and I am happy to report that good progress is bei...
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