Name: Beatrix mine.

Location: Beatrix is located in the Free State goldfields of the Witwatersrand basin, near the town of Welkom in the Free State Province of South Africa, 240 km south-west of Johannesburg.

Mine Owner/s: Sibanye-Stillwater.

Brief History: Mining operations have been undertaken in the Free State goldfields since the 1930s and gold has been produced at Beatrix since 1983.

Beatrix was one of the assets acquired by Sibanye-Stillwater when Gold Fields International completed its February 2013 unbundling transaction.

Brief Description: Beatrix is a shallow to intermediate level underground gold mine.  The mine has three vertical shaft complexes (one subshaft) and two mineral processing plants.

Primary Metals: Gold.

Secondary Metals: Not stated.

Geology/Mineralisation: The orebodies at Beatrix are laterally continuous, with relatively long-range predictability. This offers clear patterns of mineralisation governed by sedimentary characteristics.

The Beatrix reef was originally exploited as the main orebody, but has since changed, with the main production coming from the VS5 (Elsburg formation), and the Aandenk and Kalkoenkrans composite reefs.

In general, the composite VS5/Aandenk reefs range between 130 cm and 350 cm in width. The orebody is shallow dipping at 10º to 15º, with typical open-fold structures. In most cases, the reefs are deemed to be bottom-loaded, with most of the gold grade concentrated along the basal contact.

Reserves: Total proven and probable reserves as at December 31, 2018, were estimated at 14.2-million tonnes grading 2.7 g/t gold.

Resources: Total mineral resources as at December 21, 2018, were estimated at 49.7-million tonnes grading 5.8 g/t gold.

Mining Method: Underground and surface rock dump (SRD) mining.

Underground mining comprises conventional breast mining in virgin areas (99%) and conventional breast mining (remnants and pillar extraction (1%).

Major Infrastructure and Equipment: The current mine infrastructure comprises three producing shaft complexes and two processing plants (carbon-in-leach and carbon-in-pulp), each processing underground ore and SRD material. Ore is processed at Beatrix at 365 000 t a month.

Tailings are contained in two tailings storage facilities, with a combined capacity of 111.2-million tonnes (a surplus of 87.3-million tonnes over life-of-mine deposition requirements).

Prospects: A scoping study on Beatrix’s Bloemhoek decline project was finalised during 2018 and shows potential for extraction of the orebody below the current 3 Shaft infrastructure to the north into the southern Orange Free State mining right area. A prefeasibility study was expected to be initiated in 2019 to determine the optimum extraction plan before being included in the life-of-mine.

Contact Details:
Sibanye-Stillwater
Tel +27 11 278 9600
Email ir@sibanyestillwater.com
Website https://www.sibanyestillwater.com