Fin24 reports that AngloGold Ashanti said in a statement on Wednesday that it had made "the difficult decision" to restructure the company to support a smaller footprint in South Africa.  

The restructuring process will affect all employee levels, including the South African executive committee and senior management.  The company indicated as follows:  "South African operations continue to face a multiplicity of challenges, including increasing depth and distance from central infrastructure, declining production profiles, and cost escalations that have continued to outpace both inflation and the gold price. In addition, the margins are negatively affected by a much stronger exchange rate."  The gold producer promised that the consultation process with the trade unions would be aimed at ensuring the remaining assets - which employ approximately 8,200 people - remained viable.  The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said they would engage AngloGold to try to prevent the retrenchments, while the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) vowed to try preventing job cuts by working with its union rivals.  "We call on all trade unions to form a united front to save jobs in the mining sector," Amcu stated.

• Read this report by Tehillah Niselow in full at Fin24

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