Gold Fields: A baptism of ice in Chile
Delays at Salares Norte and problems at South Deep mean the miner is in desperate need of some good news
The first six months at Gold Fields have been less than easy for CEO Mike Fraser. By his own admission the first quarter “wasn’t a good start”, headlined by a one-fifth output decline. That was in May. A month later, Gold Fields cut its full-year production forecast by as much as 220,000oz to between 2.2-million and 2.3-million ounces — about 10%. Gold Fields’s shares fell by a similar amount on the day.
The primary reason for the cut was the culmination of a series of delays at Salares Norte, the company’s $1.1bn, 400,000oz per year project in Chile’s high-altitude Atacama Desert. The project’s targeted production had already been cut last year, which forced it to extend the ramp-up into a winter that came early and caused the mine’s pipes to freeze...
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