KALGOORLIE (miningweekly.com) – South Africa-headquartered Gold Fields on Tuesday said that it would only consider developing its four growth projects if they met certain criteria.

Speaking to Mining Weekly Online on the sidelines of the Diggers and Dealers conference, in Kalgoorlie, Gold Fields Australia executive VP Richard Weston stated that the four projects had to meet a minimum of 20% to 25% notional cash expenditure or profit margin.

At the moment, none of the four projects met the criteria.

In Peru, Gold Fields was undertaking a new scoping study on its Chucapaca project, after an initial feasibility study completed in 2012 was thought to be suboptimal.

The new study would evaluate various new mining configurations for Chucapaca, including the possibility of a less capital-intensive, lower volume, but higher-grade underground mining operation, as well as additional exploration on early adjacent targets.

At the Far Southeast project, in the Philippines, Gold Fields would focus on limited surface geotechnical drilling, as well as securing free prior informed consent, which was a prerequisite for obtaining a financial technical assistance agreement.

In Finland, at the Arctic Platinum project, a prefeasibility study was currently under way, while the Yanfolila project, in Mali, had been advanced to a resource development stage and infill drilling has been planned, along with a technical-, environmental- and social-impact study if the project could be fast-tracked to a development decision by year-end.

Weston noted that Gold Fields would consider a number of options at each project, to increase the financial parameters, including lower output, enforcing stringent stage gates, and de-risking the projects, where appropriate, with the introduction of financial or technical partnerships.

“All four of the projects are currently in the [no develop] category, and they will all need a lot more work,” said Weston.

However, he noted that Gold Fields had taken a decision to cut back on its capital spend for 2013, with only $28-million set aside for near-mine exploration, instead of the $65-million spent in 2012, with $25-million of this budget to be spent on the Australian St Ives asset.

Weston said project spend would only increase once market conditions improved.