JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Johannesburg- and New York-listed gold mining company Gold Fields has placed its South Deep gold mine in Gauteng on care and maintenance to coincide with South Africa’s lockdown until April 16.

In publishing its integrated annual report for 2019 and a number of associated reports on its website, Gold Fields CEO Nick Holland provided an update on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Gold Fields and its operations, detailing the actions taken by the company to date, both in response to government directives and on its own accord.

Apart from South Deep, the rest of the group production has been largely uninterrupted but against the background of increasingly stricter regulations being put in place by governments around the world.

As a result, Gold Fields has cautioned that its production and cost guidance for the 2020 financial year provided in February has an elevated level of risk.

On the position of the company going forward, Holland said the potential effects of a three-month operational closure period across the group, based on periods of lockdown experienced in China and South Korea, could potentially be no production and approximately 50% savings on cost and capital.

Gold Fields balanced its view that the company would be a stable, going concern for the foreseeable future with the caution that its estimate, based on expectations of future events, including the unknown length of the closure period, was inherently uncertain.

Associated reports on the website include the statutory annual financial report for 2019, which includes the governance report containing the audited separate and consolidated financial statements for the year ended December 31, as well as the 2019 mineral resources and reserves supplement, the company’s global reporting initiative and its climate change report.

The integrated annual report and the annual financial report incorporate reviews of the South African, West African, Australian and South American operations, the group’s project activities, as well as detailed financial, operational and sustainable development information.