AngloGold Ashanti announced a new “game-changing technology” that can safely mine “all of the gold, only the gold, all the time”, said the firm’s new CEO Srinivasan Venkatakrishnan.
There’s no drill and blast. Effectively it removes the seismic impact, brings a safe working environment, eliminates dilution and brings all of the gold out.
AngloGold Ashanti recently announced it’s cutting 2,000 non-mining jobs. The decision was made after the company lost $135 millions during the second quarter of this year. The main guilty? The reduced price of gold during this period and the consequential write-down of ore stockpiles.
However, this new technology might help change things around for AngloGold Ashanti. According to its COO South Africa Mike O’Hare, the operations in the country led to the development of this improved mining method: specially designed reef-boring machines, which are going to arrive on site in the first quarter of 2014.
Other gold companies have already shown some interest in the technology, making AngloGold Ashanti to leave the patents aside. “We’ve done this effectively as a common initiative, which could improve not just gold mining, but also potentially platinum and other sectors as well”, Srinivasan Venkatakrishnan said.
Although the technology has the potential to reverse this negative period for the mining industry, “this is not a technology to replace the labour count”, the CEO of AngloGold Ashanti added.
The firm expects to boost the productivity gains, without having to waste time drilling and blasting, as well as eliminating mining waste. Besides, there’s also the benefit of being able to return to the mined-out areas where the gold has been left in the ground because it was uneconomic to mine. The capital cost might be higher, but so will the cash flow be.
The new cutter heads for the four new machines have already been delivered and are expected to improve the cutting rates.