
Beyers Nel
CEO: Harmony Gold
‘We’ve had a nine-year stint of meeting our guidance every time, and actually beating that guidance’
BEYERS Nel will be the first group CEO of Harmony Gold Mining with a deputy, Floyd Masemula, who will have responsibility for the South African operations. This unusual move may imply that Masemula is being lined up to be Nel’s successor but it may also reflect the firm’s growing local and international footprint. Nel’s predecessor, Peter Steenkamp, who retired last year, did so on a high note assisted, of course, by a rampant gold price. Harmony also achieved above-guidance production of 1.5Moz, while headline share earnings doubled. Steenkamp assured shareholders a similar level of output would be maintained for the next 20 years, based on the various copper and gold projects in South Africa, Papua New Guinea, and Australia.
The strong gold price is not only boosting returns to shareholders, it also makes funding for these projects cheaper and easier to attract. Capital is being allocated to life extension projects in South Africa and extending the Mine Waste Solutions deposition facilities. The Eva Copper project in Australia has received a A$20.7m grant from the Queensland government due to its importance to the region, and the feasibility study shows that Eva can produce more copper, at 50,000-60,000 tons a year, than originally anticipated. An investment decision will be taken only in 2026 but Harmony describes it as potentially “transformational” for the group. Steenkamp achieved much, especially in his final year, but one box that wasn’t ticked was a special mining lease for Golpu in Papua New Guinea. Nel could ask for no better source of impetus as he sets about the job of following Steenkamp than permitting for the massive project.
LIFE OF BEYERS
Beyers, who has 24 years of experience in gold mining, is a long-serving Harmony executive who joined the group in 2003. He was appointed COO in 2016 and group COO in January 2023. He is a past president of the Association of Mine Managers of SA and is currently the chair of Mines Rescue Services. He holds a mining engineering degree from the University of Pretoria and an MBA from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.