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Johannesburg - Bullion producer Harmony Gold [JSE:HAR] said on Tuesday it has swung back to a quarterly profit despite a fall in production as it benefited from a smaller foreign-exchange loss on a US denominated loan.
The company said it has begun a safety improvement drive to avoid a repeat of a February accident at its Doornkop mine when a fire and rockfall killed nine miners.
Chief executive Graham Briggs said the company was taking "fairly drastic measures" on safety.
“We have independent outsiders doing a complete safety review on all our operations... We have to have a safe mine environment," he said on a conference call. The review's outcome would be known in around two months.
South Africa's gold mines are the deepest and among the most dangerous in the world but the industry has made strides to improve safety in recent years.
Because of the Doornkop incident and other operational problems, the company's gold production fell 12% in the quarter to 269 000 ounces.
But Harmony cashed in on a higher rand/gold price which increased 8% to R451 00/kg because of a weakening of the domestic currency. This benefits metals producers in South Africa because most of their costs are in rand.
The company said its headline earnings per share for the quarter to the end of March were 12 cents after a loss of 21c in the previous three months.
The grade of the ore that Harmony is mining improved by 5%t to 5.1 grammes per tonne, the third consecutive quarter of improvement, a trend which will also flow to its bottom line.
The company said it continued to evaluate scenarios for its Wafi-Golpu project in Papua New Guinea, including the prospect of "a substantially lower capital expenditure development option".
The company said it has begun a safety improvement drive to avoid a repeat of a February accident at its Doornkop mine when a fire and rockfall killed nine miners.
Chief executive Graham Briggs said the company was taking "fairly drastic measures" on safety.
“We have independent outsiders doing a complete safety review on all our operations... We have to have a safe mine environment," he said on a conference call. The review's outcome would be known in around two months.
South Africa's gold mines are the deepest and among the most dangerous in the world but the industry has made strides to improve safety in recent years.
Because of the Doornkop incident and other operational problems, the company's gold production fell 12% in the quarter to 269 000 ounces.
But Harmony cashed in on a higher rand/gold price which increased 8% to R451 00/kg because of a weakening of the domestic currency. This benefits metals producers in South Africa because most of their costs are in rand.
The company said its headline earnings per share for the quarter to the end of March were 12 cents after a loss of 21c in the previous three months.
The grade of the ore that Harmony is mining improved by 5%t to 5.1 grammes per tonne, the third consecutive quarter of improvement, a trend which will also flow to its bottom line.
The company said it continued to evaluate scenarios for its Wafi-Golpu project in Papua New Guinea, including the prospect of "a substantially lower capital expenditure development option".
