Machines ‘can save mine jobs’

Hundreds of thousands of jobs can be saved and the closure of large swathes of SA’s gold mining industry can be staved off by mining the deposits with smart new machines, Sibanye Gold CEO Neal Froneman says.

Speaking in his capacity as vice-president of the Chamber of Mines, of which most of SA’s gold mines are members, Froneman said the industry would experience a sharp decline in production by the end of this decade and “die out almost completely by 2033” if those operations continued to use expensive, labour-intensive mining methods that have barely changed in a century.

An estimated 200,000 goldmining jobs would be lost if that happened, he said.

“The picture changes radically with mechanisation: annual output persists at current levels until at least 2025 and until 2030 or even beyond with 24/7, mechanised operations,” he said, saying mines could continue until at least 2045.

SA has been the single largest source of gold and was once mining 1,000 tonnes a year in the 1970s, but that has come off precipitously as mines have aged, become deeper and had a decline in grades or the amount of gold in each tonne of ore hauled to the surface.

AngloGold Ashanti’s Mponeng mine is the deepest in the world at 4km deep.

SA’s gold output has dropped to about 150 tonnes a year and could fall to just 50 tonnes in five years but it still has 50% of the world’s known gold resources, said Cadiz mining specialist Peter Major.