Struggle for gold that is hard to mine
Scratching below the surface at South Deep
Despite its benefits, mechanised methods have largely been unsuccessful in SA, writes Charlotte Mathews
South Deep will be the last huge deep-level gold mine SA ever builds. But it was left to last for a good reason — because of its depth and seismicity, its numerous owners have battled to find the right way to mine it at a profit. South Deep’s payable reef is unusually wide for the Witwatersrand, reaching 16m in some places, though the average grade is unexceptional, at 4-5g/t. The width makes it more suitable for mechanised bulk mining than other, narrower reefs in the region. Yet experts from Australia, Canada and the US, where mechanised mining is more common, have been unable to help with hurdles other than width, which include seismicity and an unskilled labour force. Views are mixed on whether South Deep should have been designed originally as a conventional (hand-held drilling) or a mechanised mine. Though SA mining is traditionally labour intensive, the costs of labour have risen above inflation every year for the past 20 years, while productivity has fallen steadily. There i...
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