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South Africa's energy and logistics threats should be turned into turned into opportunities, says African Rainbow Minerals (ARM) CEO Mike Schmidt.

Speaking to Mining Weekly in a Zoom interview following ARM’s presentation for 40% higher headline earnings at R5 171-million, Schmidt urged the country to never let a crisis go to waste.

“These open significant doors and opportunity, particularly for a company like ARM,” added Schmidt, who is also going all out to cut the current rampant mining inflation to the lowest possible level.

ARM executive chairperson and founder is Dr Patrice Motsepe.

“Where we are in our diversified portfolio, logistics and power are so important. The question raised to me one day that I’ve never forgotten is how do you ultimately, as a diversified bulk player, reduce your dependency on electricity and on logistics, because those are ever above-inflation increases,” he said.

Besides keeping absolute focus on beating logistics and energy constraints, ARM under his leadership is focusing of everything it can manage to keep lean as it sets out to ultimately, as a diversified player, go green and ultimately reduce its dependency on carbon and lower its carbon intensity.

“We’re doing a lot of work and research in term of feeding into that space and it is early days and I don’t want to shoot off our mouths prematurely, but reducing that is key and ask what we can do as a mining industry. The next transition has to pick up undoubtedly.

“Get clean, get highly efficient and most importantly where industry is struggling with today worldwide are declining grades,” he said.

ARM has put the value-addition spotlight on conventional type submerged arc furnaces that are highly dependent on electricity.

“We are quite aggressive busy at looking at other more energy efficient methods of smelting and whilst that’s not going to make an impact in the first 12 to 18 months, it certainly puts us on a platform and we owe it to the industry to focus on reducing and getting our costs down,” he said.

Mining Weekly: What lasting positives do you foresee coming out of collaboration and partnerships?

Schmidt: There’s absolutely no doubt that collaboration and partnership is the way to go, and I’ve been privy to being part of many of the early stage interventions and discussions, which are gaining in intensity. We may not be the cause, but it’s certainly our problem, so unless there’s a collective collaboration, partnership and absolute resolve to find low-hanging fruits, opportunities to improve efficiencies, pointing fingers at each other is not going to get us there. The indications are that we’re certainly stepping in the right direction and I’m cautiously optimistic we’re going to see a good result. There’s political will, there’s undoubtedly from government the drive to improve the mining industry for obvious reasons, and most important I think that level of collaboration will improve our sustainability and make enterprises like Transnet and Eskom a lot more profitable and sustainable.

Are you looking to the sun to give your operations some energy?

The 100 MW where we are now is purely a wheeling opportunity from the Free State for the platinum group metals operations. But we are looking in intensely the Northern Cape as to where we put standalone units with battery storage facilities. This will be for every one of our operations to ultimately to become more efficient, greener, less dependent on Eskom per se or fossil fuels. Yes, we’ve got diesel generators but they’re very expensive to operate.

And what about bulk logistics being ameliorated?

Up until very recently we would have said well the cheapest and most profitable way is to put ore on a rail and export it, and that probably has been true for many years, but when you look at the logistical constraints, cost of power, demurrage concerns, the world where it is today, there’s no doubt that, even for a product like iron-ore, you can ask why don’t we reduce dependence on logi...

The headline earnings of African Rainbow Minerals rose by 40% to R5 171 million in the six months to December 31, when the JSE-listed company maintained a robust financial position, with net cash of R9 548-million.

An interim dividend of R14 a share amounting to R3 145-million has been declared by the company headed by executive chairperson Dr Patrice Motsepe.

Cash generated from operations increased by R469-million to R5 294-million.

Capital of R1 004-million has been brought forward to enable the Bokoni platinum mine project to deliver early ounces following the project’s definitive feasibility study (DFS) progressing on schedule.

The DFS is focused predominantly on mining the upper group two (UG2) resource, using mechanized mining methods and targeting on-reef development. The early-ounce project will be focused on a combination of mining high-grade UG2 stopes in Middelpunt Hill shaft and early on-reef development of the new UG2 mine.

Critical orders for long lead items, to de-risk the project schedule, have been placed. The ore will be processed through the existing 60 000 t a month UG2 concentrator plant which will be refurbished as part of the early-ounce project. The early ounces will enable the mine to capitalise on the current strong PGM basket prices and commence with early development of the underground infrastructure required for the new planned UG2 mine. The first saleable PGMs concentrate from the early-ounces project is planned for the first half of the diversified mining company’s 2024 financial year.

A fatality occurred at Two Rivers platinum mine in the period when contractor employee Seutlwadi Esron Ramathesela was injured and later succumbed to his injuries.

Iron-ore, manganese ore and thermal coal volumes were negatively impacted by logistics challenges.

Unit production costs remained under pressure mainly owing to lower production volumes and above-inflation increases for diesel and explosives costs.

Progress was made developing decarbonisation pathways to meet the long-term target to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas Scope 1 emissions from mining by 2050.

All operations are on track to meet the requirements of the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management.

Diversified mining company African Rainbow Minerals (ARM) has invested R1-billion of capital to deliver early ounces at the Bokoni platinum group metals (PGM) mine, the company said on Monday when the JSE-listed company delivered 40% higher headline earnings to R5 171-million in the six months to the end of December.

The definitive feasibility study for newly acquired Bokoni is expected to be completed by June by the company headed by Dr Patrice Motsepe, which declared an interim dividend of R14 per share amounting to R3 145-million.

On growth projects, ARM reported that the capital cost of the plant commissioning of the Two Rivers Merensky project has increased by R1.5-billion owing to cope changes as well as geotechnical and global procurement challenges.

This project remains competitive and accretive to the Two Rivers mine, ARM stated in its presentation in which the commissioning of an additional 40 000 tonnes a month million capacity at the Two Rivers plant expansion was described as being successful.

Meanwhile, the Gloria manganese project is 95% complete, following the Black Rock manganese project being completed and handed over to the operations in September last year.

The development of the Bokoni Mine and the Two Rivers Merensky project provides more than 100% growth in ARM’s PGM six element (6E) ounce profile over the next five years as ARM invests in brownfields projects to unlock value from the large resources in its portfolio that include the Modikwa PGMs operation, Mining Weekly can report.

PGMs, at 44%, were the biggest contributor to ARM’s earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) in the last six months of last year, followed by iron-ore at 32%.

ARM is projecting an 118% increase in PGM production in the next five years to 2027, when the group output will have more than doubled from 299 000 oz a year in its 2023 financial year to 652 000 oz in its 2027 financial year, based on approved projects and unapproved projects under consideration.

The Ebitda of the PGMs business is a high 51%, with iron-ore at 46%. Rhodium at 45% and palladium at 28% were the two biggest contributors to revenue, followed by platinum at 19%. Lower PGM prices in dollars were largely offset by the weaker rand.

The ARM Ferrous business reported 15% lower iron-ore sales volumes to 5 652 t owing to logistical challenges. Engagement with rail authority Transnet to address these challenges is under way.

Manganese ore sales were 6% up, however, at 1 779 t mainly due to the sale of ultra-fines product. Included in the export sales volumes is 90 000 t of manganese that was transported by road to Saldanha Bay.

Momentum in the hydrogen economy is continuing to build, Implats group executive refining and marketing Sifiso Sibiya reported when he presented an Implats slide outlining global market trends for the platinum group metals (PGM) of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed company, which this week announced half-year free cash flow generation of R11-billion generated after funding capital expenditure of R4.9-billion.

The slide, which highlighted the technological advances that will diversify and support future PGM demand, singled out hydrogen as a PGM demand sector which is continuing to gain traction, with demand projections being de-risked and showing improvement.

Mining Weekly can report that green hydrogen and PGMs are joined at the hip from the point of generating the product through proton electron membrane (PEM) electrolysis and then turning the hydrogen back into green electricity with the help of platinum-based fuel cells. These fuel cells then provide the cleanest of clean zero-emission mobility as well as having the capability to generate clean, green stationary electricity.

It is important to recall that Implats pioneered hydrogen powered forklifts several years ago at its PGM refinery in Springs. (See above picture.)

Also during its half-year financial and operational results presentation two days before the Implats' presnetation, Sibanye-Stillwater CEO Neal Froneman described the hydrogen economy as underpinning the world’s future energy requirements through PGMs.

And a week before that, Anglo American Platinum CEO Natascha Viljoen highlighted the hydrogen space as being “an exploding space”.

Viljoen also drew attention to South Africa’s own hydrogen corridor being declared a strategic integrated project, which is scheduled to get under way this year with 20 hydrogen buses being supplied by three hydrogen trucks. The corridor is expected to eventually create 14 000 jobs and consume 63 000 oz of platinum.

The first trial phase will make use of existing spare green hydrogen capacity at Anglo American Platinum’s Mogalawena PGMs mine, increasing that in 2024 to 50 trucks and 50 buses and then progressing to 500 trucks and 300 buses, with the route extending from Limpopo through Gauteng to KwaZulu-Natal.

“What's important for us as an economy is also the development that we see happening across the world,” said Viljoen, in reference to the global uptake of hydrogen as a future clean universal energy source, which is dependent on PGMs that South Africa hosts so overwhelmingly.

The PGMs are needed to:

generate green hydrogen;

turn green hydrogen back into electricity;

create the green hydrogen to power internal combustion engine (ICE) hydrogen vehicles; and

potentially also in time significantly lower the weight of batteries used by battery electric vehicles through research that is very well under way.

The lower cost of green hydrogen through EU initiatives has prompted green hydrogen end use in Uber fleets in Germany, with all global advances of this nature pointing to South Africa's PGMs industry – which employs 500 000 people directly – being boosted as the world transitions away from fossil fuels as part of the global decarbonisation imperative to mitigate climate change.

The hydrogen economy encourages the use of PGMs because PEM electrolysis is ideally suited to the variability of renewable energy. Moreover, the uniqueness of PGMs takes on both temperature and energy variance. This is crucial because of the variable flow of sun and wind energy. This reduces overall cost and improves overall efficiencies, with the key word being overall.

Important to note is that green hydrogen vehicles only need to capture 10% of the future light vehicle market to have the same demand sector of today’s ICE vehicles.

The other point is that hydrogen generation – and the fuel cell electric vehicles that turn the hydrogen back into green electricity – are far less mineral intensive when adjudged from engine to wheel. From a recyclin...

Mining Weekly Editor Martin Creamer discusses the response to Implats's request for information on wheeled renewables; mine life extended owing to cheaper electricity; and stats that the world is warming to pre-industrial levels, a long way off from the Paris Agreement requirement.

Platinum group metals mining and marketing company Implats was unable to stem the high global inflation tide in the six months to December 31.

Half-year group unit costs per six element (6E) ounce rose 15% to R19 346/oz. Fuel inflation hit Implats' Canada operation at the sky-high level of 71%. (See Implats' slide above and also watch attached Creamer Media video.)

“The one storm that we could not negotiate as well as I was hoping for was the high global inflation rates, so when you look at our unit cost increase, you will see a 15% increase in the unit costs up to R19 346/6E oz, the consequence of global inflation,” Implats CEO Nico Muller said during the company’s presentation of half-year financial and operational results, when gross profit was R17.2-billion and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation of R24.5-billion.

“It’s particularly consumables such as explosives, fuel, steel and power, but in addition to that we’re seeing the translation cost of our dollar in Zimbabwe and in Canada because of the weakening of the South African rand,” Muller said while displaying a slide that showed fuel up 45%, steel up 30%, chemicals up 24%, explosives up 20% and power up 10%.

“When you translate that back into rand, it adds to the cost increase and then we’ve seen reduction in efficiencies, mainly as a consequence of load curtailment” – the step that mining companies take during the loadshedding of electricity by Eskom.

“We have seen a similar increase in our capital expenditure, so the inflation has pulled into capital expenditure. If you just look at normal stay-in-business capital expenditure, you’ll see a similar increase in capital expenditure.

“But in addition to that, our capital has ramped up in line with our investment strategy and the projects that have been approved,” Muller said.

Capital rose by 39% to R4.9-billion.

“A combination of increased capital, increased operating cost – in particular because of capital prepayments in Zimbabwe. people are not prepared to do work in Zimbabwe unless we pay them before they do the work, so increased capital is running ahead of the actual progress of work.

“Then, a very important issue for us during the last reporting period is the increase in inventory.

“When we did have a hiccup is once the ore is reduced, it's concentrated, but where we absorb load curtailment in Implats is at our smelter complex in Rustenburg.

“So when we are asked to reduce electricity consumption, we switch the furnaces off, or reduce the consumption, and so you will see that we were down 9% with the processing of refined 6E production.

“We normally operate with 625 000 oz roughly of inventory in the company at the end of the last reporting period. In the similar reporting period the previous year, we had 40 000 oz excess inventory and during this reporting period, we increased that by another 100 000 oz.

“All of these things have had an impact. If you look at the earnings, it went up by 4%. Ebitda went up by 2% but when you translate that into cash flow, the cash flow reduced from R15.1-billion to R11-billion.

“That also informed the dividend that was slightly better than the minimum 30% of our policy and retaining R5.9-billion on the balance sheet, which I think was done for very constructive purposes.

“Our R11-billion cash translated into a R4.20 per share dividend, which if you add the returns to minority shareholders of R600-million, it amounts to a total shareholder return of 36% of discretionary capital allocation,” Muller explained during the presentation of results covered by Mining Weekly.

Platinum group metals (PGMs) mining and marketing company Implats benefitted from strong demand for its primary products in the half-year to December 31, amid a robust rand PGMs pricing environment, which mitigated the financial impact of broad-based inflationary pressures, the JSE-listed company said on Thursday.

The company has allocated R4.3-billion over the next five years to energy security and decarbonisation. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)

Half-year gross profit was R17.2-billion, with earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation at R24.5-billion and headline earnings at R14-billion.

Free cash flow of R11-billion generated after funding capital expenditure (capex) of R4.9-billion, and 36% of free cash flow was allocated to shareholder returns.

South African processing assets were constrained by the timing of scheduled maintenance and the increased severity and frequency of load curtailment. In total, an estimated 9 000 six-element (6E) ounces of mined volumes were foregone and 38 000 6E ounces of refined production deferred owing to power constraints during the period.

“The benefits of our geographically diverse production footprint and maiden contributions from our suite of growth projects countered the challenging global macro-economic and operating environment, which was typified by high inflation and intensified utility-level power constraints in South Africa. Operating momentum was sustained during the period, and there was limited direct impact on mined volumes from escalating load curtailment in South Africa,” said Implats CEO Nico Muller.

“Rand PGMs pricing remains robust and we are well positioned to pursue our capital investment programme and sustain attractive shareholder returns. The operational focus for the remainder of this financial year is on ensuring stability at our South African mining and processing assets during an expected period of inflationary pressure and more persistent load curtailment, and recommissioning the refurbished Number 4 smelter at Impala Rustenburg,” said Muller, who emphasised the company’s commitment to rigorous stakeholder engagement as it navigated the changeable socio-economic environment in South Africa and Zimbabwe and pursued a successful conclusion to its proposed acquisition of a majority stake in Royal Bafokeng Platinum.

The company’s social performance projects benefitted 130 000 people.

Rand revenue per 6E ounce sold increased by 5% to R38 117/6E oz sold as PGM markets tightened on demand recovery and constrained supply going into 2023.

Concentrate production at managed operations at Impala Rustenburg, Impala Canada, Zimplats and Marula increased by 2% to 1.18-million 6E ounces, with 6E concentrate production from joint venture operations, Two Rivers and Mimosa, remaining unchanged at 270 000 oz.

Third-party 6E receipts of 169 000 oz were 10% lower than those in the prior comparable period, with several operational challenges reported at peer group producers, including load curtailment and severe weather events. In total, 6E-in-concentrate volumes produced were stable at 1.62-million ounces.

Group refined production of 1.48 million 6E ounces, including saleable production from Impala Canada, declined by 9%. Smelting capacity was constrained by increased load curtailment and the scheduled rebuild of the Number 4 Furnace in Rustenburg, which started in late November 2022. Implats ended the period with 140 000 6E ounces of excess inventory compared with none in the corresponding 2021 period.

Notable rand depreciation resulted in additional inflationary pressures, compounding the impact of high energy and consumables pricing on the translated cost and capex at the Zimbabwean and Canadian operations. Total cash operating costs increased by 15%, while unit costs were further impacted by lower refined production and, on a stock-adjusted basis, increased by 15% to R19 346/6E ounce.

Capex at managed operations rose by 39% to R4.9-billion as expe...

Platinum group metals mining and marketing company Impala Platinum (Implats) has had a good response to its request for information (RFI) for electricity through wheeling from renewable energy sources to its South African operations.

Implats closed the RFI at the end of January and now has 7.8 GW under consideration until the end of March, Implats executive: sustainable development Dr Tsakani Mthombeni, who is driving the energy process, said in response to Mining Weekly during a media round table. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)

“It’s clear that there’s a lot of potential capacity out there. It’s just a matter of going through that, locking it in and getting some of that productive,” added Implats group executive corporate affairs and strategy Johan Theron.

Implats intends for the wheeled electricity to be delivered to energy delivery points at its nominated sites in South Africa.

The JSE-listed company is committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 with a short-term target of 30% reduction of its carbon emissions by 2030.

“The switch to renewable electricity will play an important role in achieving these goals and in eliminating worsening electricity supply disruptions, ” Implats CEO Nico Muller stated during a pre-recorded early morning presentation.

“All our Southern African operations are progressing low-carbon alternative and renewable power projects,” Muller added.

The current carbon generation of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed company is about 3.3-million tons of carbon a year, which it aims to reduce to 2.2-million tons, a saving of 1.1-million tons.

In its RFI, Implats requested potential independent power producer (IPP) bidders – with the relevant competencies, capacity and experience – to register with it.

At its Rustenburg operations, Implats has aspirations to introduce 290 MW of renewable energy, 170 MW of it being through a solar photovoltaic plant and 120 MW the subject of a wheeling arrangement.

The 290 MW will be made up of several individual projects, typically aimed at supporting mine shafts that have lives sufficient to support a renewable energy project.

Alternatively, they could be introduced at shafts close to smelters, so that power supply can be rerouted to smelters with the least effort in the event of shaft closure.

The company also has plans to introduce 30 MW of solar power at its Marula mine.

In Springs, Implats’ refinery aims to receive 15 MW of renewable energy as part of a wheeling arrangement as insufficient property exists there to erect a solar or wind project.

Through the RFI, Implats required bidders to include the anticipated IPP project structure diagram showing ownership of the project company and key experience related to executing similar projects.

Other critical information required by Implats involved developmental readiness of bidders' proposed IPP facilities, taking in site availability, proposed renewable energy technology and grid connection confirmation and the status of different site studies, licensing and permits.

The three-phase renewable energy rollout of Harmony Gold is not only driving decarbonisation but the reduction in electricity costs has the potential also to extend the mine life through a triple-win outcome.

On the productivity front, strides are being made under the S300 business improvement platform, which involves each of the company’s conventional underground crews safely producing 300 m2 of material per crew per month. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)

Through the first two phases alone, the JSE-listed company is estimating savings of R425-million a year and reducing carbon emissions by 60%, with the third phase involving the study of technologies that have the potential to provide baseload, Harmony CEO Peter Steenkamp outlined to Mining Weekly in an online interview.

With its expected copper projects further reducing its carbon footprint, the gold-mining company is targeting a net-zero carbon outcome by 2045.

When S300 began, crews were doing in the region of 240 m2/crew/month as a mean across the conventional underground operations and the run rate is now up to 260 to 270 m2/crew/month.

“We’ve got that last little bit to go, and if you translate that into miners’ language it’s that extra one-and-a-half blocks that we’re looking for,” said Harmony Group COO Beyers Nel.

S300, he explained, involves technology and people aspects that relate to a productive environment and resource energy around improving the environment for people to be successful, whether that be through the use of localised hydropower to improve drilling cycles for conventional rockdrill operators, or different operating shift environments.

“There’s a spread of many little projects that we’re trying to drive to facilitate the growth to S300,” he added.

These questions were put to Steenkamp.

Mining Weekly: You are close to self-generating some of your electricity requirements and the projected savings are already looking attractive.

Steenkamp: Phase 1 is the 30 MW through a power purchase arrangement (PPA) in the Welkom area, close to our Tshepong gold mine. Then Phase 2 is 137-MW plant that we're going to build in two legs. The first 100 MW is being built by ourselves with the green loan that we secured some time ago, and another 37 MW, which will also be through a PPA programme. In Phase 3, we are looking at technologies that can potentially give us some baseload and that work is still in the prefeasibility phase in terms of what can potentially give us that kind of extra boost. We're quite excited about the 30 MW and under the 137 MW that we're going to put together, and because of that it's now fully approved in terms of our approvals and the 30 MW is currently in construction. By September next year, all of that will be built, and 30 MW by the end of this financial year, which is in June.

Can lower-priced self-generated electricity play a role in extending mine life?

That’s what we always do when we cut costs. We'd be plugging in a cost figure, we plug in what will determine our cutoffs. This will probably bring the cost down by about R10 000 a kilogram. If you plug it in, that will not move the needle that much, but the more you have renewables and cheaper electricity in place, then it can have the effect of being able to beat inflation and when you plug in the price and you plug in the cost, then we get a mine life that could potentially bring some resources to the reserves.

Productivity is so important in mining and S300 seems to be working well.

Yes, the best possible way to bring profit to the bottom line is to improve productivity. We've got quite a significant leadership under our Group chief operating officer Beyers Nel and lots of projects to improve our productivity over time. The S for safety is very intentional. Safety is always first and then it’s about the productivity improvements. We will not make any productivity improvements at the cost of safety. It must all be safe, and we've moved the needle under S300. If we look at...

The South African operations of Harmony Gold did very, very well in the six months to the end of December last year load curtailment notwithstanding, Harmony Gold CEO Peter Steenkamp said during a media call on Wednesday.

“There are many mines that performed above expectation,” Steenkamp said in response to Mining Weekly.

Harmony’s high-grade Mponeng and Moab Khotsong underground gold mines had a good second quarter driven by an increase in tonnes milled and an improvement in underground recovered grades.

Operating free cash flow from these two mines increased by 7% to R1 043-million in the six months on grade and price.

At Mponeng, underground recovered grades increased by 20% to 8.72g/t, resulting in a 13% increase in gold production.

At Moab Khotsong, the Zaaiplaats project is progressing and feasibility studies to determine the possibility of deepening Mponeng and conducting pillar extractions at Savuka and Tau-Tona are underway, for likely conclusion as part of the JSE-listed company’s annual planning cycle in August.

Harmony’s net profit soared 36% to R1.9-bilion on a 6% increase in revenue to R23.3-billion.

“The management programme that’s been a part of Harmony for many years worked exceptionally well during the half year. With the good safety you get a very good feeling at the mines when you are there. The culture’s good, people are positive and want to perform, and for me that was the big takeaway, and we can continue with the momentum going forward,” he added.

While loadshedding is a massive issue, Harmony is succeeding in managing it. “I don’t want to under play the problem, but if you look at our results, I can’t say that they have been impacted by loadshedding, which is due to the good work that Beyers Nel and his team have done in managing its effect,” said Steenkamp. Nel is Harmony’s group COO.

“We have load curtailment, not loadshedding, so we can decide on where we are going to cut loads of certain areas and at many of our mines, we do have the luxury of maybe hoisting when we don’t have load curtailment. I take my hat off to our engineering and operational teams for being able to do that,” he said.

All-in sustaining costs for the South African underground optimised operations increased by 8% to R914 454/kg ($1 642/oz) mainly owing to the ongoing project at Target 1 and lower-than-planned underground recovered grades

at Kusasalethu.

Operating free cash flow margins from Tshepong North improved to 8% from -10% and Tshepong South improved to 18% from 8%. Joel’s operating free cash flow margin improved to 12% from -16%.

MPONENG DEEPENING

Harmony is expected to complete its feasibility study into the deepening of Mponeng by the end of this financial year at the end of June. “We have to press the button on this by the end of the calendar year at the latest, but hopefully it will be earlier than that,” said Steenkamp.

There is an option of building smaller declines in the high grade areas or continuing with the current declines. It depends on what provides the most flexibility.

The feasibility done by previous owner AngloGold Ashanti is being redone to see what additional opportunities can be created.

“It’s a very exciting project on an excellent orebody and in a good jurisdiction and all the options are being studied,” Steenkamp added.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA DROUGHT

The prolonged drought in Papua New Guinea has impacted Papua New Guinea Power Limited's hydroelectric power generation and supply.

On-site diesel power generation has been necessary at a higher cost. The commissioning of the Baime run-of-river hydroelectric facility in Bulolo, 40km from site, is due to be completed by mid-year. Once completed, this will improve the power generation challenges and reduce the on-site diesel power generation requirements.

Half-year gold production at Hidden Valley in Papua New Guinea increased by 6% to 1 983kg (63 755oz). Recovered grade improved by 2% to 1.00g/t from 0.98g/t in the comparable reporting period.

Further upsid...