JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – JSE-listed gold-mining company DRDGold was "seriously deliberating" the future of its troubled East Rand Proprietary Mine (ERPM), the underground operations of which might be put on care-and-maintenance, DRDGold CEO designate Niël Pretorius said on Thursday.

Pretorius said that there was “very little good news” coming out of ERPM, where underground drilling and blasting might have to be “indefinitely suspended”.

He said ERPM’s immediate future could be decided in the “next few weeks”.

ERPM was engaging labour, government and surrounding mines and was studying alternatives for ERPM’s continued underground existence.

Pretorius told Mining Weekly Online that DRDGold had spent more than R60-million on ERPM and was in the midst of a feasibility study when two employees were asphyxiated.

ERPM’s underground performance had been discouraging and, unless the company could find a solution at that shaft, it would not be able to ventilate the underground workings, which would bring about an indefinite suspension of mining activities.

Central Rand Gold, a separate unrelated JSE- and London-listed neighbour, was currently looking at solutions for ERPM, but, if no solution could be found, “we will have to pull our people out”.

The company would then be faced with finding an alternative solution of pumping out the two-million litres of ice that were sent down ERPM daily, which would be a two-year programme that could cost up to R80-million.

It was unlikely that ERPM’s current economics could justify that magnitude of expenditure.

In the event of ERPM being put on care-and-maintenance, every effort would be made to redeploy the mine's 1 600 employees to DRDGold’s other Blyvoor underground mine on the West Rand, which was in a growth phase.

Employees might also be redeployed to nearby Ergo, in which the company had increased its shareholding to 65% with an option to buy 11% more, as well as in ongoing ERPM care-and-maintenance rehabilitation and recovery of old gold along railway lines on the surface.

“We would be able to soften the impact on the labour force, to an extent, with some redeployment to other operations,” he said.

ERPM would continue to run surface resources, one being the six-year-life Cason dump, which was currently being mined at the Knights’ plant, and the other the12-year-life Elsburg dump, which would be treated at the Brakpan plant as part of DRDGold’s Ergo joint venture with the Australia-listed Mintails.

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