JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Harmony Gold Mining Company, South Africa’s biggest gold mining company, is proving itself to be a great South African asset and it’s booming at the moment, not only because the gold price is so high, but also because this Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed company has structured itself so well to mine at a depth greater than any other gold mining company on planet earth.

Specifically, South Africa saw a phenomenal performance from the gold mine with the world’s deepest shaft – Mponeng – which delivered a wonderfully high grade of 11.27 g/t.

Mponeng’s shaft is 3 891 m below datum and more than 2 000 m below sea level and the sequential grid mining method used helps to ensure that mining does not trigger unnecessary seismicity.

Mponeng, which began extracting gold from the Ventersdorp Contact Reef orebody in 1986, is now dishing up a flood of free cash flow, not thanks to Mother Nature alone, but also the result of the human ingenuity that is being applied by Harmony Gold, which is now also moving swiftly into copper in Australia, backed by its success in South Africa.

But for now, it is predominantly South Africa’s two big, high-grade, deep-level Mponeng and Moab Khotsong gold mines – which are receiving new double-decade life horizons from strong capital investment under way – that are uplifting this company, amid good support from the very promising Mine Waste Solutions and the other surface projects, optimised assets that have been generating consistent and predictable production, as well as Hidden Valley in Papua New Guinea, where Harmony Gold also has high hopes for Wafi-Golpu, a 50:50 copper/gold joint venture between subsidiaries of Harmony and Newmont.

“But it’s the gold business in South Africa, where it all began, that’s starting to show the world that gold mining in South Africa is a good business,” Harmony Gold CEO Beyers Nel, 48, pointed out in an interview with Mining Weekly this week following the reporting of record high free cash flow of R11-billion-plus and a record final dividend of R2.4-billion. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)

The first job of mining engineer and Polokwane-born Nel was as a general underground worker at the Vaal Reefs gold mine as part of a mining graduate programme. This was followed by a linear progression of roles within the gold mining industry, which culminated in his appointment as Harmony’s group CEO from January 1 this year.

Nel sees the leading of Harmony’s 46 000 “valuable people” as his biggest opportunity.

Green electrons are expected to flow soon at Harmony Gold’s Moab as part of a 100 MW project and there is optimism that the Target 1 gold mine will be a contributing mine in 2026 financial year.

In financial year 2025, capital expenditure (capex) rose 32% to R10 998-million driven mainly by the extension projects at Mponeng, the 100 MW renewable-energy project at Moab Khotsong and Mine Waste Solutions’ Kareerand tailings storage facility extension, and capex is expected to increase in financial year 2026 to advance growth and sustain mature assets.

Mining Weekly: How widespread is the use of sequential grid mining by Harmony?

Nel: The sequential grid mining method is a method we use at some of our mines, and predominantly in the West Wits area, where Mponeng and our Kusasalethu mines use this mining method, which structures the mining fronts in a V-formation. What it does is it keeps the stresses that trigger seismicity above the normal levels of seismicity ahead of you. It's a structured, rigid and safe way of extracting ore from these deep mines, and we’ve seen the preventative controls of seismic management and safety management helping us to mine Mponeng and Kusasalethu, not only successfully but also safely, which is priority number one for us.

Where is your growth capital going?

The major capital in Harmony has been going into three assets, and these are our two high-grade underground mines which we acquired from AngloGold Ashanti – Mponeng and Moab Khotsong. We’re extending the life of those two mines by 20 years with major capital investment, sinking declines, deepening infrastructure to do that. Then the third one, the asset we acquired with Mponeng, also from AngloGold – Mine Waste Solutions – is a big surface remining project. The re-capitalisation of that is almost complete and that’ll give Mine Waste Solutions 16 years. So, we're very proud to say that we’re spending a lot of major capital investment in South Africa, which is an area which we are proud to be associated with. We see ourselves as a partner of choice in South Africa and these are three examples of projects where we’re not only saying that we're positive about South Africa, but that we’re also long in capex investment in South Africa.

Can you give us some insight into what may materialise from Harmony’s Target gold mine?

Target is a mine that, you could say, was the underperformer in the last financial year and that underperformance was as a result of the mine having to be recapitalised. The growing pains, if you will, were the commissioning delays post the recapitalisation. Most of that is now behind us. The crusher has been moved down the mine, the conveyor belts have been extended further down the mine, the engineering workshops have been extended closer to the mining fronts, so we're quite optimistic that Target will be a contributing mine in this financial year. We're already seeing some green shoots as we speak, and we're looking forward to demonstrating that return on invested capital.

How much gold is Harmony likely to recover from tailings and surface mining?

Surface mining is a phenomenal business, and you can see in the latest results that there are some stellar performances in tailings re-mining, good margins, low risk. We would love to see more of that in Harmony. For example, we have 5.7-million ounces locked up in old tailings dams in the Free State alone, which we can bring to fruition, and we’re conducting studies to further expand our surface mining reach both in the Free State and in the West Wits area, Mine Waste Solutions being in the Stilfontein area, a key area of growth for us going forward.

Is Harmony expecting to benefit from renewable-energy generation?

Renewable energy is still being developed as part of the same announced programme. You’ll recall that we got off a little bit slower than anticipated in terms of getting going on what is now called our Sungazer 2 project, which is a 100 MW solar PV plant at our Moab Khotsong operation. We're extending the life of that operation by 20 years. We'll have green electrons flowing there soon and feeding into Moab Khotsong, which reduces our dependency on Eskom, and also assists us with power inflation. I just had a look at the site the other day and it's a beehive of construction. It's exciting and the solar panels are going up. We’re very much looking forward to the benefits of that. It's in full swing at the moment.

Then, finally, what's the big takeaway?

The big takeaway is the success of the gold business, and that success is firmly rooted in South Africa. It's two high-grade operations, predominantly, Mine Waste Solutions and the other surface projects, but also the optimised assets that have been generating consistent, predictable production, that’s enabling Harmony to grow the business and invest into future production. So yes, very proud of the performance. Hidden Valley was another successful story, but it's the gold business in South Africa, where it all began, that’s starting to show the world that gold mining in South Africa is a good business.