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Gold Fields looks for smaller acquisitions outside SA - Nick Holland, CEO
In an interview on Radio 2000 @ 18:35 on 31 March 2008
[miningmx.com] -- GOLD Fields will look for smaller acquisitions as well as the larger, trade-mark prospects, but these will fall outside South Africa, new Gold Fields CEO Nick Holland said.
"Maybe we've got to also look at adding some shorter-life, high-margin assets to the portfolio. And I'm not adverse to doing that either," Holland said on the Moneyweb Power Hour week-nightly radio programme.
"That's something we'll consider, provided of course they make good money. One of my key priorities is to make sure that we generate real cash returns on our investments, that we have demonstrable returns of capital; that's going to be key for me," he said.
South Deep, which it bought last year from Western Areas, Harmony and Barrick, is most likely the last South African purchase, Holland said.
"I think one has to accept that South Deep is probably the last major
acquisition that we're going to make in South Africa. So I think most of the focus is going to be outside of our borders," he said.
"The South African industry is pretty mature. Whilst there's a lot of gold here, a lot of it is very deep and we still have 20 to 30 years of operation here, easy, and we've got a lot of South Africa already in our portfolio. So we'd like to diversify and get some non-South African stuff in," he said.
Holland thinks there is scope for the gold price to go higher.
"I think gold does have the potential to go higher. How much higher I'm not going to postulate. I know Ian was particularly bullish on gold, and we often used to have a joke about that, about whether it's going to be $2000 or $1500 an ounce," he said.
"I think it can go higher, and it certainly can go higher over the balance of this year and into next year. So there's certainly scope to make more money in this business. I think the trick is to make sure
the operations are set up to deliver the gold ounces that they need to deliver."
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