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In an interview on 702 @ 18:25 on 7 May 2009 [miningmx.com] -- Gold Fields CEO Nick Holland is confident the company will achieve its target of one million ounces/quarter made when Holland was fresh in the CEO seat. Gold Fields missed a forecast of 960,000 oz made last quarter for its March period output, with gold production rising 4% to 871,000 oz. “The integrity of the target is still in place, it’s just a question of the time frame,” Holland said on SAfm Market Update. He said next quarter the company expects to report 900,000 oz production. “One million is not a shoot the lights out target, it’s very achievable,” he said. Holland said he is hoping to reach the 950,000 – 1 million ounces range in December this year. “We will show a continued improvement over the next few quarters. We want to get production up without sacrificing our safety standards,” Holland said on Radio 702’s The World at Six. Consistent zero fatalities in deep level mining can be achieved, Holland believes. “There’s no silver bullet. We all have to continually work harder to achieve it. We won’t give up,” he said.
In an interview on SAfm @ 18:15 on 6 April 2009 [miningmx.com] -- SASOL has intensified its review of business practices to weed out any collusive actions after it was hit with a second big fine, said Fay Hoosain, chief competition legal advisor to the group. The South African Competition Commission and Sasol settled on a R188m fine for its cartel behaviour in the fertiliser business. This followed a fine by the European Commission in October last year of around R3.6bn for its behaviour in a paraffin cartel there. Hoosain was asked on SAfm Market Update whether the review had uncovered any further examples of such behaviour within the company, which is a world leader in converting coal to liquid fuel. "We've certainly intensified the review and, due to the outcomes that we have already received - and at this point we don't have anything that we are aware of - certainly we are still looking," Hoosain said. "We will not rest until we are sure that this organisation is compliant, and that individuals within its employ take competition law seriously." "One of the difficulties that we have is that a lot of this conduct took place in the 1990s and early 2000, so many of these individuals are no longer in the employ of Sasol. So we are dealing with trying almost to join the dots and work out exactly what happened and who was involved," Hoosain said.
In an interview on SAfm @ 18.15 on 25 April 2009 [miningmx.com] -- DRDGOLD will continue to offset ERPM's losses with increased production and cash flow from its other mines for a minimum of two years, DRDGOLD CEO Niel Pretorius said. "We considered selling ERPM, and we were looking at selling it for salvage value, because it doesn't really have a very large rehabilitation liability looming at the end of life because both the two rehabilitation issues, the tailings and the water," Pretorius said on SAfm Market Update. ERPM has 29m ounces and it has the infrastructure to access a large percentage of that. Pretorious said DRDGOLD will keep the mine on care and maintenance for at least two years, making sure that the shaft examinations are done and that the ore body is not compromised. "There might be somebody out there who would want to become a project-based participant in this mine and inject the capital necessary to bring it back into operation. We don't see going back into production there, though, within the next two years," he said.
In an interview on SAfm @ 18:15 on 23 April 2009 [miningmx.com] -- THE flow of scrap platinum onto the market prevented the price of the white metal from going to $4,000/oz last year, said GFMS CEO Paul Walker. Looking ahead, Walker identified investment inflows into the platinum market as the big unknown on the demand side. "In terms of supply, I guess the key question is really what happens to scrap of jewellery origin," he said on SAfm Market Update. "You are talking about the better part of a million ounces of metal going back to the market last year, and that's the reason we didn't see $4 000 platinum last year," he said. "The question in my mind is, does it drop to somewhere round about a million ounces because of the low price, or has the infrastructure been put in place that maintains relatively high levels of platinum jewellery scrap going forward? Those are the two unknowns that I would highlight for 2009," he added. GFMS, a London-based metals consultancy, is forecasting a surplus in the platinum market in 2009, following from excess supply last year. "Supply-demand in platinum is still pretty tight, there's still very, very low stock levels, and I think in the context of potential shocks to South African production, there's still going to be a risk premium in that," Walker said. "The other thing you have to bear in mind in the context of platinum of course is where the production costs are, and if you just look on a platinum equivalent basis, you are probably talking somewhere in the region of $1 200, $1 300/ounce to sustain South African production and bring this new production on stream," he said. "So it really does define where the floor can be, where the sustainable floor for platinum can be," he said. GFMS sees the platinum price not moving significantly lower than $1 000, with $900 being very much the low. It set $1,400 as an upper limit. "Palladium is still going to have these, if you like, stock worries; the fundamentals just at a growth level, a basic commodity level, look good, but the stocks are still going to weigh on us," Walker said. "So there's probably not a huge amount of downside risk for palladium where we are at the moment, and you're probably talking somewhere in the region of $300 as an upside target for 2009, again driven by the willingness of people to invest in this metal and hold it."
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