HARMONY Gold said on Monday it had resumed full construction activities at its Eva Copper project in Australia after authorities had earlier stopped site clearing owing to the discovery of a protected skink.
Commenting in its first quarter production update, Harmony CEO Beyers Nel said the approval had been granted allowing clearing and bulk earthworks to restart. That would give Eva fresh momentum, but a second referral was now in motion. While that could yet impact the project, Eva’s $1.55bn to $1.75bn capital cost was intact, he said.
“We welcome the recent approval under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 which allows clearing and bulk earthworks including related construction and pre-stripping, to recommence,” he said. “This is an important step in our staged approval process.
“A second referral has been submitted, and we will provide the market with material updates,” said Nel.
In bullet points outlining the quarter’s highlights, Harmony said: “Original project capital guidance range unchanged and project remains on-track to deliver first production towards end of calendar year 2028, pending Referral 2 outcome”.
Development activities at Eva, which is scoped to produce 50,000 to 60,000 tons of copper a year following a three-year construction period, were reprioritised in July after the discovery of the protected blue-tongued skink, a type of lizard native to Australia, Indonesia and New Guinea.
Although the mine is in Queensland, the discovery of the species is a federal matter that requires the company to finalise skink biodiversity offsets and get the second referral signed off to unlock the remaining open pits and full-scale operations.
Work has continued on the project with $114m (R1.85bn) in capex spent during the quarter on Eva’s development. About 15% of construction was complete with some 700 workers mobilised to site.
A permanent village had also been built while about 19% of total concrete had been poured along with progress on important processing capital items including the primary crusher, coarse ore stockpile, ball and SAG mills, and thickener and flotation foundations, said Harmony. Long-lead equipment has started arriving on site ahead of installation in 2027, it said.
In addition to Eva, Harmony acquired the CSA copper mine, also in Australia, with a view to increasing production to about 40,000 tons a year within the next three years, and eventually taking group copper production to 100,000 tons a year.
In the three months ended September, CSA produced 7,077 tons of copper generating R1.28bn ($79m) in revenue. “This revenue is additional to our gold business,” said Nel. “It gives shareholders growing exposure to strong copper fundamentals.”
Harmony left gold production guidance unchanged for the year ended June 2027 at 1.4 to 1.5 million oz gold and gold equivalents. Full year copper production from CSA – forecast to be 28,000 to 30,000 tons – would offset lower gold output at Moab Khotsong in South Africa owing to previously flagged geology, the group said.
Harmony’s all-in sustaining costs came in at R1.3m/kg (US$2,484/oz), at the bottom of its guidance range of R1.3m/kg to R1.395m/kg. The year-on-year rise was mainly due to inflation in labour and electricity costs, higher royalties on the back of the gold price, more development capital and lower output from Moab Khotsong. Cash operating costs for the gold portfolio rose only 7%, against planned mining inflation of 10%.
Harmony also said it was relatively well insulated from higher energy costs linked to the Middle East conflict, as diesel makes up a small part of its cost base, at about 50 litres per gold-equivalent ounce.