The US Bureau of Land Management has announced plans to allow increased mining on land that once belonged to two national monuments Donald Trump shrank.
Holland said the company has made every effort to avoid the drastic move, but said the choice was now between that and serious risk to the future of South Deep and its many stakeholders.
The project is made up of five contiguous exploration permits and has a historic gold production of around 40,000 ounces of gold, mined between 1985 and 1996.
The $87.5-million deal is the latest Chinese acquisition of a lithium project in South America, following Tianqi Lithium’s decision to buy 24% of SQM for $4.1 billion, which has not yet been approved by Chile’s antitrust regulator.
While lithium and potash are often found in the same deposits and mined together, the increasing number of projects aimed at producing the white metal shouldn’t have an impact in the potash market.
The struggling mine, Gold Fields’ only asset left in South Africa, holds the world’s largest gold deposit after Grasberg in Indonesia and accounts for 60% for the company’s mineral reserves.