Modern Mining August 2016

GOLD

Blue sky ahead for DRDGOLD With the R320 million flotation/fine grind (FFG) circuit at its Brakpan (Ergo) plant now working ac- cording to expectation, DRDGOLD – which has its primary listing on the JSE and a secondary listing on the NYSE – would seem to have plenty of blue sky ahead. Certainly this seems to be the view of investors who have pushed the company’s share price up from just 160 cents a year ago to over R11 at present, reflecting satisfaction not only with solid results over the past few quarters but also DRDGOLD’s excellent prospects. Modern Mining’s Arthur Tassell recently visited the Brakpan plant (as part of a media contingent) to get an update on the company’s operations.

R oughly a decade ago (when Niël Pretorius was appointed as CEO, a position he still holds), DRDGOLD was still primarily a deep-level gold miner, with its main assets in South Africa – it still had op- erations in Australasia at that stage – being the venerable Blyvoor and ERPM mines and the Crown tailings operation. Since then Pretorius and his management team have transformed DRDGOLD, which ranks as the oldest contin- uously-listed mining company on the JSE, al- most beyond recognition. The group disposed of its last underground asset, Blyvoor, in 2013 and is now a 100 % ‘surface miner’, with its entire gold production being generated from one of the world’s largest and most technologi- cally advanced tailings retreatment operations. DRDGOLD believes that its focus on tailings retreatment offers multiple benefits, not the least being the dramatic reduction in risk that comes with having all operations on surface. For the most part, the only ‘mining’ that the group now undertakes is the hydraulic mining of the tailings resource, which is an operation that presents relatively few safety risks (and which is, in any event, performed by specialist contractors). Not only is safety enhanced but the labour requirements of tailings retreatment are also modest compared to underground mining. To put this in perspective, DRDGOLD – through its operating subsidiary, Ergo Mining Proprietary Limited (Ergo) – employs around 900 people (a figure which would more than double if contractors are included) to mine and process 1,8 Mt of material a month. By contrast, Blyvoor, when it was still owned by DRDGOLD, employed in the region of 4 500 permanent employees to produce 80 000 tonnes of ore a month. At this level of produc- tion, Blyvoor was producing roughly 14 000 ounces of gold a month which is not dissimi- lar to DRDGOLD’s gold production, which in

DRDGOLD’s dump retreatment operation is a high volume, mechanised business which primarily makes use of high-pressure water jets.

28  MODERN MINING  August 2016