DRDGold waiting on permits before completing R10bn expansion

DRDGOLD said this week it had not yet received permitting for its proposed R10bn expansion to 200,000 ounces even though half the capital had been deployed and some new assets commissioned.The miner, which extracts gold from surface waste ore, is was still waiting for a water use licence from the department of water affairs and sanitation. The permit is to pave the way for expansions at its Far West Gold Recoveries operation which comprises R6.5bn of the project, dubbed Vision 2028.“We’re hoping to get this licence now so we can have this thing ready during the course of next year and get commissioning,” said Niël Pretorius, CEO of DRDGold in an interview. “I’d be surprised if we don’t have it ready by July of next year,” he added.The company was reticent to press the button on legal proceedings because the departmental delays were due to it being under-resourced rather than technical failings.“The licence is with the national office. We managed to tick all the boxes with the regional office, and that typically is where the delays sometimes come in,” said Pretorius. “It’s now lying at the national office, but they obviously also have to consider this properly, and sometimes they come up with new requests.”Permitting delays are an industry-wide hazard globally but in South Africa they are compounded by poor policy which gives the country a poor reputation in the eyes of international investors.“The process is just so complex, and they are so lean on resources that it does take a long time. The turnaround [time] there is forever. You can’t accuse any of these officials of being obstructive or intentionally difficult — it’s the volume of work, the complexity, and the availability of resources.”Vision 2028 consists of four projects comprising the expansion of DRDGold’s Ergo facility, east of Johannesburg and a three part expansion of FWGR, an asset acquired from Sibanye-Stillwater after the group took a 50.1% stake in DRDGold. The doubling of FGWR’s Driefontein Tailings Storage Facility has been commissioned while a 135km pipeline connecting other FWGR assets – a new reclamation station at Libanon dump and a new tailings facility called RTSF – is 95% complete.The Water Use Licence is required for the Libanon pump station, west of Johannesburg, which butts on to a wetland. The proposed nine month construction of the pump station cannot begin, however, until the permit is awarded.There has also been a delivery slippage in the final part of the expansion plan which is the expansion of the Withok tailings storage facility (TSF) at Ergo, though at an incremental 20,000 ounces of additional gold a year this is considered a fairly minor aspect of the overall expansion programme.“That’s the risk of doing business here, because the department is the department, the standards are the standards,” said Pretorius. “They apply them, but it’s complex, and there are not a lot of people doing it, and that’s where your timeline execution risk comes in.”The post DRDGold waiting on permits before completing R10bn expansion appeared first on Miningmx.Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Mining.com Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Mining.com