Harmony Gold said yesterday that it anticipates meeting annual guidance for the 2023 financial year due to strong production and higher recovered grades.
In its pre-close update, the gold miner said it continued to deliver excellent underground-recovered grades from its South African operations, underpinned by a phenomenal performance from Mponeng. As a result, underground recovered grades would be higher than the guided 5.6g/t for the 2023 financial year.
Harmony Gold CEO Peter Steenkamp said as anticipated, recovered grades at Hidden Valley also improved in the fourth quarter. Therefore, production for the group would be towards the upper end of the 2023 financial year guidance of between 1 400 000 and 1 500 000 ounces while all-in-sustaining costs had remained comfortably below R900 000 per kg, as guided, for this financial year.
“We have maintained a robust and flexible balance sheet as we continue into the second year of our higher capital expenditure programme in line with our growth ambitions.
“This growth programme will improve the quality of our ounces by allocating necessary capital towards our higher-grade underground mines and higher-margin surface and international operations,” he said.
Steenkamp said during the year the group had continued to grow its surface retreatment operations and advanced its investment in copper, a future-facing metal, through the successful acquisition of the Eva Copper project in Australia.
“Harmony also continues to advance the Tier 1 Wafi-Golpu copper-gold project, one of the largest copper-gold block cave projects globally, which represents approximately 40% of our Mineral Reserves.
“The signing of the framework memorandum of understanding with the Government of Papua New Guinea in April 2023 was a significant step forward towards securing the Mining Development Contract and Special Mining Lease for Wafi-Golpu. Together, Eva and Wafi-Golpu provide an enviable global copper growth platform that, once developed, will deliver meaningful copper production into the critical minerals supply chain for decades to come,” the group said.
Meanwhile, Steenkamp said Harmony had seen a remarkable and transformative improvement in asset quality through its series of value-accretive acquisitions and targeted capital expenditure programmes over the past five years.
“I am proud of what we have achieved this financial year, and I believe that we have a solid foundation with strong momentum heading into the new financial year,” he said.
BUSINESS REPORT