Why record gold prices can't coax new mines out of South Africa - MiningMX

AI desk brief

Despite gold trading above $4,000/oz and briefly topping $5,300/oz in January before easing to about $4,150/oz, South Africa is still struggling to attract new mine development. The article says global output rose less than 1% last year to about 3,672t and only around 3% in H1 this year, while South Africa’s production has collapsed from about 1,000t in 1970 to 88.5t last year despite an estimated 5,000t of reserves.

The bottleneck is not just geology but economics, exploration culture and permitting: South Africa now accounts for less than 1% of global exploration spending, and deep Witwatersrand orebodies often require prohibitively expensive shafts, ventilation, refrigeration and pumping. Higher prices are helping existing producers extend mine lives and reopen old assets, but the excerpt argues very few projects represent genuinely new orebody discoveries.