AngloGold's last spin of the gold coin
Some see the miner exiting SA as it cuts jobs, faces pay talks
The question prompted by AngloGold Ashanti's move to cut 2000 jobs locally in an attempt to streamline its operations is: just how much more life does it think there still is in South Africa's ever-shrinking gold fields? National gold output peaked at 1000 tons in 1970 and last year the industry produced only 147 tons. At its peak, it employed more than 550000 mineworkers. Now it employs fewer than 100000. While mechanisation has long promised to reach more gold deeper than 5km, it has simply not happened. The job cuts at AngloGold - Africa's largest gold miner - are an attempt to cut overheads across the business, including at executive level. After the cut, the miner would have 6200 workers, compared to South Africa's biggest gold miner, Sibanye-Stillwater, which has 34000. With a dollar gold price largely stagnant for the past five years and a strengthening rand, AngloGold, which started a restructuring programme last year, is looking ever closer to the point where local operatio...
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