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Financial Mail reports that in the year ended December 2018, production across Gold Fields globally slipped 3%, revenues were 7% lower and losses for the year slid to $348.2m, compared to $19m the year before.
Much of this had to do with South Deep. Though it has one of the world’s largest gold deposits, the mine hasn’t reached production targets for a long time and has proved to be a black hole for Gold Fields cash, guzzling about R100m a month. The mine was massively restructured in 2018, involving the retrenchment of 1,100 employees and as many as 500 contractors. Martin Preece, Gold Fields executive vice-president for SA, pointed out that the layoffs formed part of a selection process to leave the operation with "fewer, better people". Gold Fields expects to see the benefits of the painful and costly restructuring process, soon. But investors remain sceptical. All the producer wants from South Deep in 2019 is that it breaks even, but that’s far from certain. At the presentation of the annual results, Gold Fields CEO Nick Holland said: “There has to be a step change, and soon." He observed that the company always knew what it had to do, but was now focused on tightening up the execution of this. So, Gold Fields will implement a number of initiatives at South Deep including improved drilling and blasting, rigorous performance management, improved fleet utilisation and better stakeholder management.
- Read more of this report by Lisa Steyn at SA Labour News
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page