JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – South Africa's second-largest gold-miner Gold Fields may build another gold mine in the Andes, this time 5 000 m up.

The Chucapaca, in southern Peru, is at an advanced stage of drilling and Gold Fields hopes to have a scoping study out by June 2010.

Gold Fields earlier this year fully commissioned its Cerro Corona gold mine in northern Peru, which gave a strong performance in the September quarter.

"Its grades look stellar," Gold Fields CEO Nick Holland said on Thursday.

Chucapaca is one of three advanced drilling projects, the other two being in the Yanfolila Belt in Mali and at Talas in Kyrgyzstan.

"I am intending to get there in the next couple of months to have a look at it," Holland said of Chucapaca.

He conceded that operating at 5 000 m would be a challenge, but Gold Fields currently operates at 4 000 m at Cerro Corona, situated in the highest part of the Western Cordillera of the Andes.

Chucapaca is a 51:49 joint-venture project with the diversified South American mining company, Buenaventura.

Gold Fields has been active in Peru for the last six years and has a good grasp of the politics and the socioeconomic issues.

"I would be quite happy to build another mine there," Holland said.

Gold Fields has several projects in the Yanfolila Belt in Mali, following its acquisition of Glencar.

Gold Fields intends intensifying its Yanfolila drilling campaign after Mali's rainy season ends with a concept study expected in 12 months.

The third advanced drilling project is the Talas project in Kyrgyzstan, where the focus is on the Taldybulak copper/gold porphyry target and where concept study is expected to be completed by the end of June.

Talas is in the Tien Shan gold belt, which extends from Eastern Europe, across Central Asia and into western China.

"Tien Shan's a big belt, and we know there are some big deposits there. I want us to be patient in Kyrgyzstan and not rush things. We know, from what we've seen there already, that there's large potential," Holland said of Kyrgyzstan, where the Soviet Union established considerable infrastructure in a countryside of snow-capped mountains.

"We have never had three advanced-stage drilling projects before, and there is a pretty good chance that one of these will be a mine. We have never been in better shape to deliver a new mine into the Gold Fields portfolio and its long over due, and we hope to deliver it least one of them and maybe even all three," said Holland.