Some of South Africa’s gold mines successfully ramped up production to 90% of electricity usage over the weekend, while were still working on reaching the 90% mark.
The country’s number two gold producer, Gold Fields, said it had reached 90% power usage over the weekend, and that with the electricity available, the company was balancing power between underground production, and surface beneficiation, so as to achieve maximum efficiency and production across all operations.
<br /portable pallet grinding>“At Beatrix we will concentrate on underground operations, but in areas where there are sufficient stockpiles, we will focus on beneficiation. Although we will utilise the electricity we are susand crushing processpplied with to the best of our ability, there will still be lower production overall,” Gold Fields spokesperson Andrew Davidson told Mining Weekly Online.
South Africa’s nudetail design jaw crushermber one producer, AngloGold Ashanti, had not yet reached 90% of electricity consumption, but expected to hit the mark by the end of the week.
“We are still working on reaching 90%, and we will give the market an update on progress on Thursday at the release of the company’s results,” AngloGold Ashanti spokesperson Steve Lenahan said.
State-owned electricity provider, Eskom, urged mines to reduce their consumption, as it was experiencing supply constraints. The utility said on Wednesday that mines could ramp up to 80% of power usage after it had previously asked mines to operate on emergency basic survival mode to reduce consumption, as it feared for the stability of the entire transmission system. Mines were then told by Eskom that they could ramp-up consumption to 90% on Friday, but then retracted that statement on Thursday morning. After more back-and-forth, Eskom on Thursday evening reinstated the go-ahead to ramp up to 90% on Friday, and mines proceeded with this cautiously.