[miningmx.com] — BUFFELSFONTEIN continues to give mining junior
Village Main Reef a hard time and was the main contributor to the company missing
output guidance for a third quarter in a row.
Village posted production figures for the June-quarter on Thursday, reporting output
of 46,424 oz of gold and 1,436 tonnes of antimony. The figure for gold included a
first-time contribution of 6,944 oz from Blyvooruitzicht (Blyvoor), the mine it
recently acquired from DRDGold. Excluding Blyvoor’s production, the group’s output
was 0.73% lower than that of the first quarter; which itself showed a 15% decrease
from the December period.
“.our expectations are that production volumes for June will be more in line with
volumes achieved during the December-2011 quarter,’ Village said in commentary
accompanying its March-quarter results. This has failed to materialise, with
Buffelsfontein’s output down a further 5%.
“Although Buffelsfontein managed to improve gold grades mined, this did not
translate to higher gold production,’ read comment in the latest production update.
“Production volumes at Buffelsfontein were negatively impacted due to safety
stoppages which resulted from a fire at No. 7 shaft, as well as stoppages related to
seismic activity at the mine.’
The group said safety stoppages were an issue at all its operations, resulting in a
loss of 53 production days – the equivalent of 107kg of gold production and 86
tonnes antimony production.
“The loss of production and the impact of winter electricity tariffs have had a
negative impact on the notional cash cost per kg, although absolute costs at the
operations were well controlled,’ Village said.
The higher winter electricity tariffs added some R30m to the costs of all the
operations in the group during June 2012, with approximately R11m of this being
attributed to Blyvoor.
