The world’s largest gold resources company, Gold Fields, is casting its net “even outside of the current South Deep mining permit” in its new regional study, which embraces South Deep-Western Areas-Kloof and surrounding areas.



Gold Fields has two initiatives on the go in the area, one focused on finding operational synergies and infrastructural integration opportunities between South Deep and Kloof mines – which the Kloof-South Deep Optimisation (KSDO) team is undertaking – and the other on determining the extent to which the regional whole is greater than the sum of the many parts that Gold Fields now owns.



Past legacies have for so many years precluded many South African orebodies from being mined to full potential, invariably “farm fences” on the surface dictating what goes on many kilometres underground and petty historical rivalry preventing national patrimony from coming to the fore.



But, perhaps, South Africa can look forward to something different now that Gold Fields owns so many contiguous assets.



Its senior consultant: mineral resources, Tim Rowland, said as much last week: “Even real estate outside of the current mining permit of South Deep could well fall into that optimisation that the KSDO team is looking at. “I think we have put the right initiative in place and the right kind of people behind that project to get the end game there,” he said.



Rowland spelt this out in reply to a Mining Weekly question, after revealing that Gold Fields’ mineral resources – including ore reserves – now stood at 251,7-million ounces, 40% higher than in the past.



He pointed out that the 67-million ounces that South Deep added was so voluminous that the vertical axis of the chart he was presenting – on year-on-year movement per mining asset – would have had to extend way beyond the top of the page and several metres into the air had it been precisely portrayed.





He said that three-dimensional seismic work had already been completed for the South Deep area and this would provide struc-tural models for the South Deep area.



Those seismics would be fur- ther complemented by a new 40-month R135-million surface-and- underground infill drilling programme.



He described the infill drilling programme location as a “vast area of real estate” and said that the programme would identify additional pierce points throughout the Ventersdorp Contact Reef (VCR) and the Upper Elsburg orebody and pin down the Upper Elsburg sub-crop, which was “critically important” from a life-of-mine planning perspective.



The infill drilling results would enable Gold Fields to arrive at a “far more robust model” for the VCR and the Upper Elsburg “for the entire region”.



Gold Fields operational head Terence Goodlace said that the 64 scenarios studied for Kloof-South Deep had been reduced down to five key concepts, which were being evaluated.



“As you can imagine, in terms of this, it’s not just a matter of access, but also one of ventilation, seismics and rock engineering.



“It’s pretty complex and we’re looking at the Kloof-South Deep interdependencies,” Goodlace said, adding that an update on the optimisation project would be provided at the end of August.



Gold Fields CEO Ian Cockerill told Mining Weekly that the study would arrive at the best way of making the region work optimally.



“I think it’s going to be very helpful in taking that land we have at South Deep and asking the question about what is the best way to mine it.



“Many want an answer in three months, but this is a 40-year orebody. We can afford to take our time and make the right decisions.



“There is a lot of interactivity. If you look at phase two, I think there are only four holes there and we need to firm up the drill density there.



“The structure we know about because of the three-dimensional seismic survey, which gives a very good indication of structure, but we want to firm up on some of the values.



“It’s one helluva orebody that’s giving us a good solid 30 years of mining in South Africa, a wonderful platform to continue the inter- national diversification and growth,” Cockerill said.



It did not mean that Gold Fields was no longer interested in the international side of the business, but South Deep presented an opportunity to buy a 30-million-ounce orebody right next door to existing Gold Fields operations at a “very competitive” price.



“If that asset had to be bought outside of South Africa, it would have cost significantly more,” Cockerill told Mining Weekly.



“We believe that the gold price is going up, which means that we should be trying to acquire addi- tional ounces. If we can bring some synergies to the table to an asset right next door to us, it would be wrong not to take up the opportunity.



“It is not a diversification from our internationalisation strategy, but an opportunistic acquisition of something that we have always wanted for a long time and something that became available.



“It is going to take a lot of effort to get it up to where it deserves to be. “There is no doubt that the fire has held the mine back tremendously and that there is a lot of catch-up to do, but I am sure we will come right,” he said.



Great companies were built on great assets and South Deep was a great asset that fitted the Gold Fields franchise completely.



Meanwhile, the mineral resource management processes used by Gold Fields continued to improve through enhanced competent persons’ reporting.



Its resource and reserve statement has been audited by a leading independent global mining con- sultancy and was compliant with the South African mineral reserves and resources code and aligned to the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.



Mineral resources were calculated using a gold price of R135 000/kg in South Africa; A$875/oz in Australia; and US$650/oz in Ghana, Venezuela and Peru.



Ore reserves of 94-million ounces, 44% up, were calculated using a gold price of R100 000/kg in South Africa; A$650/oz in Australia; and US$500/oz in Ghana, Venezuela and Peru and the South Deep reserves were reported at just above R87 000/kg.