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Johannesburg - Gold Fields [JSE:GFI] will close its South Deep mine for between three and four months for safety upgrades, CEO Nick Holland said on Friday.
"As a consequence of two fatalities, which took place at or just outside the workshops, we’ve had a review by the Inspectorate of Mines," he said in a conference call.
He said the inspectorate issued a stoppage order, so all operations in the workshops underground at South Deep had to stop. Workshops are used to maintain and service the underground fleet and rigs used in mechanised mining.
The mine had gone 13 months without fatalities, he said.
"That effectively means that mining operations have virtually come to a standstill because those workshops are integral to the mining model."
Holland said he could not guarantee when operations would resume.
One of the deaths happened when a dump truck reversed over a contractor.
"So we’re looking at all of the fleet and making sure that all of the necessary safety devices are checked," Holland said.
The other death was in a workshop where a 282 jumbo drill rig boom was being lowered. The boom was moved outwards and struck a man as he walked past.
"We have never had these kinds of accidents before. It is unique to South Deep to have these kinds of accidents," Holland said.
"I must say that these two fatalities are almost counter-intuitive in the sense that they’ve come at a time when we’ve been doing a lot of work to improve the working conditions underground, to improve the standards of work generally."
Fifteen specialists had come to South Africa from Australia to help address skills deficits in the operations, he said.
Holland said he went underground last week and looked at the areas of concern.
"The conclusion that I’ve reached is that actually we can’t fix these areas concurrently with mining, which is what we have been trying to do over the last couple of years," he said.
"In fact, the conclusion we’ve reached is that we should stop and fix these... So we’ve taken the steps to shut these areas down and to remedy the areas as a matter of urgency."
Another issue was that the mine had too much equipment and possibly too many workers.
"And even at full production down the road, which we still believe we can achieve by the end of 2017 - full production of 650 000 ounces to 700 000 ounces - we’ve got more than what we need," said Holland.
The mine, which had 4 000 employees and between 1 700 and 1 800 contractors, had started talks with unions.
The National Union of Mineworkers on Friday said it was concerned over Gold Fields' intention to review 500 jobs at the South Deep mine.
"We reject any job losses. We are told that more than 500 workers might be affected," general secretary Frans Baleni said in a statement.
Holland did not say how many jobs could be lost.
