A move from low-profile to high-profile mining at gold major Gold Fields’ South Deep mine is yielding benefits, having not only improved production volumes by 87% in the first and second quarters of this year, compared with the same period last year, but also increased other key metrics. One of the key benefits of high-profile mining at South Deep is that it has made it possible to mine destressed ore, and Gold Fields CEO Nick Holland says the volumes mined using this method have increased from 0% in 2015 to “virtually all the tonnes” at present. He believes that this method will be key to sustaining and improving production at the mine.
