Nico Muller Executive VP: South Africa Our sincere thanks for actually making it on time. My name is Nico Muller. I was appointed by Gold Fields on 1 st October responsible for Gold Fields South Africa. That sounds quite neat, but actually it means South Deep because we re a single asset business. Anyway, I am the Executive Vice President and I will act as host for today. Without further ado, Mr Holland, if I could ask you to come and introduce our business. Thank you so much.
Nick Holland Chief Executive Officer What I really want to do is give you some of the history since Gold Fields has owned South Deep. I will then hand back to Nico, and he will tell you about his early observations and what he sees as the way forward together with the team. I think a lot of people haven t been in the Gold Fields stock for that long and maybe they don t know some of the history. We have only owned South Deep since April 2007. That is when we acquired 100% of the operation. That doesn t sound that long ago, but it is around seven years essentially that we ve had the mine. 2
What have we actually got? Why did we buy this? I was a key part of this decision in Gold Fields seven years ago. Well, first of all it s one of the largest ore bodies in the world, 38 million ounces of reserves and 76 million ounces of resources. We have had a hell of a lot of geologists crawl over this ore body in terms of looking at plans etc. And generally I think everyone has said this is something special, it s something unique. And it is really the Elsburg reef package that excited us because of the thick reef packages we ve got and the natural ability for us to deploy mechanised mining. If you look at the West Wits a lot of the conventional ore bodies are narrow. They are dipping at about 35 degrees. They don t really lend themselves to mechanised mining, whereas this ore body is dipping very gently at around 8 degrees. The reef packages are anything from 5m to 10m in the more proximal area of the ore body, up to 100m in the more distal part of the ore body. So it lends itself to mechanised mining, and that s one of the things that appealed to us. We saw the potential here to create a highly productive underground bulk mechanised mine. Also we thought this could be low cost, particularly if you could deploy open stoping as the main basis of mining, where you can get anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000 tonnes in a break as opposed to 500 or 800 tonnes in a normal bench or drift. We had a fairly good confidence in the ore body, and we have certainly over the last seven years proved that up. I must say all of the work that we ve done in terms of drilling it has only confirmed our understanding of the ore body. So nothing has changed in terms of our view of what we have ahead of us. The other thing is over the seven years that we ve owned it we ve largely built the infrastructure that s required. And I think you will see as you go underground that there is good infrastructure. In surface in particular you can see a lot of it as you came in this morning. When we bought this operation a lot of that didn t exist. And the other thing is it is a mechanised mine. Some people in the industry talk about mechanised mining. We re doing mechanised mining. That s the difference. I don t think we re doing it as well as we would like to do it, and that s the opportunity for us, but the point is we are doing mechanised mining. 3
So what did we acquire? Let s go back to 2007 because essentially we only completed the deal in April 2007. What did we have in hand when we bought it? Well, we didn t have a very good understanding of the detail in the geological models. We had low resolution. We had limited surface drilling. So we didn t really have much of a view beyond the first five to ten years because simply there hadn t been enough work that had been done. Essentially the deeper parts of the mine were based on what we call a Bayesian theory, in other words, if we are seeing good drill results in the shallow parts of the mine there is an assumption that that continues into the deeper parts of the mine. And we know with changes in structures and facies that that often isn t valid. So we didn t have the confidence in the ore body that we have today. We didn t have a robust life of mine that underpinned the reserves. Normally when you declare a reserve you ve got to have a detailed depletion profile year-on-year that actually talks to the reserve. We didn t have that, so we had to do a lot of work to improve that. The shaft hoisting capacity - we only had 200,000 tonnes a month. Remember the original feasibility study envisaged a 330,000 ton a month ore capacity with 370,000 tonnes in total hoisting, which includes 40,000 tonnes of waste. We only had 202,000 tonnes of that 370,000. We had a metallurgical plant that could only do 220,000 tonnes. So we were short on the hoisting capacity and we were short on the processing capacity. We also had no access to the ore body below 95 level. Now, if you look at this mine, this mine is really made up of what we call current mine, which is everything down to 95 level. There are about 2 million ounces in there of reserves. That is all we had. We didn t have any infrastructure that went below that when we bought it. Then you ve got the new mine, north of the wrench fault. That is about 11 million ounces. And then the rest of the reserve is south of that. So we only had access to probably 5% to 7% of the reserve at the time we bought it. As you will see when we go through this we now have access to a substantially greater portion of the reserve today. One of the key things we ve done over the last seven year is to push the development below 95 level into 100 level and 105 level. We had an old backfill system. We only had a CCT backfill system. We didn t have the FBT. And 4
that s a problem because when you look at the big open stopes that need to be paste filled, they are more amendable to the FBT type paste, whereas the CCT is more amendable to the de-stress system. So we had a problem there as well, and we had to get a new backfill system in place. We had no underground workshop facilities. We had very small, scattered satellite workshops. You might see some of them depending on where Adriaan and Nico take you today. But we didn t have one big workshop. One of the big plusses is that we ve managed to essentially build the big workshop on 93 Level over the last two or three years. Imagine two rugby fields underground. That is really what you re seeing in terms of the new workshop, as opposed to these very confined spaces that existed in the satellite workshops. We had two old tails dams that were very close to full capacity. So we didn t have a life of mine tails facility in place, so that was a major concern for us in 2006. And we didn t have enough installed Eskom power supply. We only had 80 megawatts of installed capacity and we need 160 megawatts to underpin full production. That was something that we had to address as well. Cooling facilities were minimal, and we didn t have enough cooling and ventilation to service the current mine and of course the new mine that we were going to be developing over time. At that point they were probably mining about 80,000 tonnes a month intermittently. And the other thing we were doing was, we were mining the VCR. We had conventional mining taking place on the VCR, which is on the other side of the sub-crop. And we had 2,000 people employed doing handheld mining on the VCR. Now, the VCR is still there. It is high grade. But we decided when we bought the mine that we must focus on the Elsburg, the massive mining which is implicit with the Elsburg reef. Of course things like hostel facilities, housing facilities were just inadequate. So we had a lot of work to do from April 2007 to where we are today. 5
From 2000 to 2005 it was thought that the reef package was really split into a number of different units with different grades. This is not like a VCR or a carbon leader where it is really one reef package. These are a number of different reef units. And the initial thinking was it was just a few units. In fact over time we ve managed to delineate a number of different units. And today we ve actually worked out there are about 16 different reef units in the thick Elsburg reef package. That s quite important for us because we re not mining all of these 16 units. We are mining a sample of the higher grade portions within those units. You can imagine when it gets to the more distal part of the ore body - where it opens up like a wedge and it gets quite thick - there is no way that we can mine 100m thick packages. We can only mine the best parts of that. When we come close to the shoreline where the wedge is a lot thinner and we ve got the higher grade stuff, generally we re mining most of that. So we had to redefine our understanding of this whole ore body. By 2007 we started getting a better understanding. By 2008 we decided that we had the 16 units based on our interpretation, and that gave us a much better resolution as to what to mine. That was also assisted by doing a lot of surface drilling. By 2009 that was also facilitated by underground LIB (long-inclined borehole) drilling where basically we drill across the ore body. That is not really to redefine grade or get better resolution on the grade itself. It is to get better resolution on the geometry of the ore body. The surface bore holes are giving us information on grade. The LIB holes are giving us information about structure and geometry largely. Allied to that we started an infill programme to get better definition, followed by grade control drilling to know exactly what we re going to be mining into the future. So all of this geological information that we ve captured from additional surface holes, additional LIB holes and grade control drilling has helped us to redefine where the ore body is, what the actual structure of the declines needs to be, and where they need to be.that has helped us to work out a life of mine plan that we can move towards with a lot more confidence. 6
So all of that has been achieved over the last seven years. We haven t fundamentally changed our view on the reserve. I think here is a good view as to what we ve done. Before we bought this a 3D survey was done to basically work out the structure of the ore body, not to define the mineralisation - but more to define the structure and essentially where the mineralisation ends. That has been confirmed by surface drilling. If you superimpose all of the surface drilling we ve done over the last seven years, about 50,000 metres, that surface drilling superimposed on the 3D seismic survey has actually confirmed the structure and geometry of the ore body. So that is very reassuring. There is a high correlation between that and the surface drilling, which has given us better information on the ore body itself. The LIB drilling, as I ve said, is really to define the structure of the ore body. So that has helped. And then grade control drilling - which is not something which is generally practised in the West Wits because mines are a single ore type, - to assess the details of the 16 different reef packages. All of that has been embedded into the MRM practises on the operation. 7
If you look at the actual mine grade over the last four or five years you can see that s the blue bars. And then the red line across shows you the reserve grade. It has come down a little bit as we ve got better resolution. One of the other reasons it has come down is that we have reassessed the mine call factor. We started off with a mine call factor that was a bit higher. As we ve got a better understanding through empirical data we ve adjusted the mine call factor. That is one of the reasons it has come down. But I would say we have a good understanding and a good confidence in the grade that exists there. So bottom line, the ore body is here. It just needs to be mined. So what have we done to set up the infrastructure over the last seven years to get that in place? Over that period regrettably we lost a year. In April 2008 we had a tragic accident here where nine people were killed. We stopped the operation in response and achieved very little in terms of mine development in 2008. We really only got going in terms of installing the infrastructure that we needed in 2009. So over that period of time we ve essentially built the mine. The one thing that I must give huge credit to is the projects team on this operation. They came to the board in 2009 with a capital vote, which was about R8.5 billion, designed to do most of the infrastructure including some of the new mine development. And if you look at where we ve got to today, we have spent 85% of that approved vote and we ve achieved what we wanted to achieve pretty much on schedule and on budget if you adjust for the time value of money. I don t think most people off the mine understand what an achievement this is. The project work to actually build the mine and build the infrastructure has been world-class, as has the work we ve done to redefine and confirm our understanding of the ore body. Both of those pieces of work have been absolutely world class. That is not just my view. I ve had a number of people here both locally and overseas. We had Turgis here in 2012. I brought them in to do a detailed review. We had our Australian team - that came from our operations - at the back end of 2013. And we had an engineering firm from Canada that also came in about 15 months ago. And the one commonality between all of these reviews is that the understanding of the ore body is good, and the infrastructure that has been put in place here is world-class and should be able to support these workings for many decades to come into the future. 8
Here is some of it that we have put in place. Over the period that we have owned it we have put in 17 km of development. Essentially all of that is in the new mine. One of the other things that has been hell of a frustrating for me is the current mine infrastructure, everything down to 95 level, was inherited. I guess, if we were building this mine from scratch today we would have done it differently. They don t have twin ramps. They have single ramps which can be a problem. If something breaks down in the ramp, that s it. We can t get access. Whereas the new mine is based largely on twin ramps. We didn t have enough ore handling capacity close enough to all of the different mining areas. But we inherited that. That s what we bought in 2007. Unfortunately one of the things you learn with these kinds of operations is you can t go and retrofit. So the new mine stuff I think is state-of-the-art. And hopefully Nico and his team will share some of that with you. But we can t go back and retrofit current mine. Current mine, however, is only about 5% of the total reserve on this operation. And that is probably going to be mined out in another nine years. So we ve put in the hoisting capacity. We now have 370,000 tonnes of hoisting capacity. That will accommodate 330,000 of reef and 40,000 tonnes of waste. We ve done a lot of work on getting the fleet up to what we need, a fit for purpose fleet. But our maintenance is not yet where we want it to be. We ve got the plant that has been expanded. I think that s great. We ve got the backfill plant built. Remember I said to you we need FBT to fill the open stopes we re going to mine. We can t use the pre-existing CCT because of the density of the tails. So that s in place. We ve got a brand new tails storage facility which will last us for the life of mine, which is very comforting. We ve done a lot of surface drilling. And we ve put in five phases of underground refrigeration and cooling, which will provide enough cooling and ventilation not only for the current mine but also for a substantial part of our new mine requirements. 9
We ve built a brand new workshop on 93 level. There is so much redundancy built into this that I think we can spread the machines out over a wide footprint. So hopefully we will have that fully operational in the months to follow. We ve upgraded our accommodation. We now have installed capacity for life of mine of the power that we need. Of course load shedding is another problem, but the important point is we have the installed capacity that is required for life of mine. We ve built mechanised training facilities. In fact if you drove in here you may have seen on the left there is a mechanised mining training centre. So the basic shell and the infrastructure is there, but we need to really review whether the training is appropriate at this point in time. 10
So that is some of the stuff that we ve done over the last number of years. So when we bought this in 2007 a lot of the de-stress mining, in fact all of it, was being done hand held. It was conventional destress. One of the first things we changed was to make that mechanised. And that took place in 2008 and 2009. We stopped the VCR. We retrenched 2,000 people and we said we ve got to focus on the Elsburg package. That is really the magic of South Deep. We started doing a lot of the de-stress into the new mine. In fact over this period of time - if you look at where we ve got to now - I think this is a very telling table over here. Of the current mine, which is 2.2 million ounces, we have actually destressed 96% of that already. That is done. When we bought it, it was two-thirds done. That was all handheld, conventional. Since we have owned it we ve done all of the rest. Essentially the current mine is de-stressed. When we bought it in 2007 none of the new mine had been de-stressed. Over that period of time we have de-stressed 9% of the 11 million ounces that is north of the wrench fault. That is another million ounces that have been de-stressed. This is really akin to underground development. Over that period of time we ve got a reasonable inventory of de-stressed ground. Current mine we have enough to mine 80,000 tonnes per year for around about ten years from that particular area. Safety has also improved. As we have mechanised the operations you can see our safety has improved. Let me tell you, safety is the absolute number one priority on this operation. We won t compromise safety for anything. I had to take a really tough decision last year to shut the mine for four months. I wasn t happy with the state of the support in some of the haulages. A lot of these haulages related to the current mine that we had inherited when we bought the operation. Some of the mesh was buckling. There was a lot of loose rock that needed to be bled etc. And these were main arterial access ways to the development and the de-stress workings. So we had to stop and fix, and that has had a major knock-on effect, which has not only hurt 2014 but unfortunately it is also going to hurt into 2015. 11
We have also right-sized the operation. We reduced our workforce by 15% last year. Depending on what Nico and Adriaan s views are - and it is early days - we ve probably got enough people. The question is do we have the right mix of skills? That is one of the key areas that the team is going to be working on. We re going to have to train people. One of the things the Australian team told us is that we ve not only got too many people but we ve got too many machines. They thought that we weren t really utilising machines the way you would internationally by deploying them to multiple ends. We were trying to work one end with one machine. So one of the things we have done is we ve dropped the number of machines. I think that strategy was probably correct. But unfortunately we haven t really got any uptick in efficiencies and productivities. So decongesting the mine is a good concept, but we haven t yet leveraged on the smaller footprint of machines and the people that we have. That is something that Nico and Adriaan will be focussing on with the team. 12
I ve talked about the safety-related stoppages. I think enough said on that. Obviously it is something we are going to have to be mindful of in the future, and make sure we never get in this position again where we have to pull back the operation. That means we ve got to do all of our support right, and we ve got to do it right the first time. We can t come back. Towards the middle of last year I became more and more convinced that we needed strong local mechanised underground mining skills. And we managed to convince Nico to come and join us, to leave the greener pastures of the platinum industry and join the gold miners. We were very fortunate and maybe my negotiating skills were good, or maybe he didn t understand what he was getting into. He is probably going to share that with you in a moment. Nico has brought in a team which we think gives us the best possible opportunity to realise the potential of South Deep. And that is probably where I want to end, because Nico is going to tell us about his views after 100 days and where we go to from there. 13
Thank you, Nick. Nick managed to attract me because he only shared 70% of the truth. Maybe just a few words about myself to start off with, just to set some context. I started my career off in De Beers with the Finch mine for a number of years. Then I went to the Free State goldfields where I was part of the team that initiated Target, which is not dissimilar to South Deep in terms of its ore body and mining methods. And I swore the day I walked out of there I would never do something as difficult as that again. Except now we are. Massive mining at 3km depth is a complex undertaking. It can be done. We ve done it before. But it is a complex operation and a number of parts have to work together for the net result to be positive. After setting up Target I joined African Rainbow Minerals and was part of the team that set up Two Rivers platinum. Everything is in mechanised operations, but the interesting challenge at Two Rivers was the fact that it was a greenfields project in the Eastern platinum limb where there even less skills available than what we have in the West Rand and in the West Wits Basin. That is one of the things we have mentioned quite often about South Deep - the availability of skills and so forth. But they have demonstrated in the Eastern Limb in recent years that skills can be developed. After that I joined RBPlats. I think the big learning lesson for me at RBPlats was the importance of continuity and sustainability under the leadership of Steve Phiri, who did particularly well with communities and social commitments. During all the platinum strikes in 2013, that s the one thing that I m probably most proud of, the way that we were able - through the support our employees, unions and communities - to sustain the operations during that difficult time. That s a little bit about me. I m going to start talking a little bit about the people, because when I look at the history of South Deep, which has had its challenges, for me it all begins with the leadership team and the organisation. They say even with a poor strategy, if you ve got a strong team you can still make things work. If you ve got the best strategy in the world and you ve got a weak team, the chances are even your strategy won t result in the desired outcome. Before I joined, Nick was very upfront about South Deep, the challenges and the history. One of the things he has shared with me is that we ve had multiple changes in management. We ve had seven managers over seven years. You can just imagine the trauma that creates at operational level when you ve got frequent changes in management. In 2014 we dissolved the regional head office which was communicated to the operations. As soon as we had done that we appointed a new regional guy 14
again. There has been a bit of a turbulent period as far as leadership is concerned. In addition to that, we also introduced the Australian team headed up by a very competent individual, Garry Mills, who headed the operation during 2014. Also they have returned to Australia. The principle behind the appointment was always noble. I think the one weakness in the whole system is that it happened at the same time as we rationalised the labour force at South Deep. So you can imagine the political pressure from the unions, the DMR, government when you are introducing foreign nationals into an operation when you are at the same time reducing numbers. I think those pressures resulted in tension between the employees and the very competent Australian team that we had put in place. My net take-out at the end is that the benefit that was sought through the introduction of the Australian team was not necessarily realised because of the misalignment between the employees and the management. It was always part of the Gold Fields strategy to have Australians come in and introduce mechanised principle and to train and mentor South African skills. Based on the experience that we had in 2014 it was decided by Nick to fast-track that process. Hence I and a number of other people have joined the process. 15
I am the Executive Vice President responsible for South Africa, which is a single asset operation. Gold Fields is a de-centralised structure. So we ve got four territories: West Africa, South Africa, Australia and America. And then a corporate head office with a number of discipline heads, sustainability, finance and so forth. So I represent the South African region. I m responsible for South Deep essentially. Reporting to me I ve got Adriaan de Beer, the newly-appointed Vice President or General Manager. And then he will have reporting to him a number of heads of disciplines. The organisational structure that we have designed is pretty standard. There is nothing unusual about it. It is pretty similar to what we have in the rest of the group. My guess is you can go to 95% of mining operations in South Africa or across the world and you will find something similar. When I arrived here it was clear that there was uncertainty. Role clarity, accountability, are big issues. One of the first things that we did was a very detailed and thorough organisational design to make sure that every member of the team knew exactly where they fit in and what their responsibilities and accountability areas are. Nick spoke about the right amount of people and that the skills mix was an issue. It was a big issue. If I said that my observation was that there was a lot of dysfunction in the way the team operated, that would not be a lie. I thought that we were really struggling, in particular the leadership in the organisation. The one thing that I enjoyed was that we had a very supportive union. And they have been consistent for a number of years. We are still a NUM based operation. But the leadership has been an issue. I think that related to the number of changes that we had made so often. We had very talented people but they were often in the wrong position. For some reason or another we had taken talented people and we had put them in a position which was not necessarily part of their experience or skills set. That as far as I m concerned led to a lot of dysfunction. So the starting point was to get the leadership addressed because the rest would follow from that. So I went on a recruitment exercise. And I think you will agree with me that not a single one of the 16
people on the next two slides were appointed because of their looks. They were specifically hunted because they were good at what they were doing. It is not only that they had the experience, because a lot of people have the experience. We were looking for something different. We needed experience and a proven track record. For me there is a big difference between the two. We were not going out and hunting for students. We were hunting for people who had a proven track record. This can t be the first rodeo, because South Deep is a complex challenge. So we wanted people who had been in the roles that we were identifying for them and had done that for a number of years. 17
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So I was very happy to be able to convince Adriaan, again by only sharing 70% of the truth with him, to join the operation. I ve noted the appointment date of some of the people. It was also very important for us to have a blend of new members joining the team, but to retain some of the existing pool. As I said, it was not that everyone that was working at South Deep was necessarily incompetent. We ve got fantastic talent. It has got to do with role clarity and making sure that people are in the right seats. What we ended up with at the end of January was a balanced team with capacity being infused from a proven track record plus combined with a very competent staff representing the existing South Deep that understands where we have come from and what we have done. It is quite interesting for me that for every deficiency that I observed in the business, the team could show me three or four reports since 2007 where the same deficiencies had been highlighted. I actually made no novel discoveries in the business. So I don t think the issue at South Deep is understanding where the weaknesses are. It has got to do with developing the capacity to remediate the known deficiencies. So I m not going to go through all the new appointments. I will just highlight that South Deep will be led by Adriaan, who is our General Manager, and Francois van Heerden. Adriaan and Francois both come from Two Rivers, where they were managing the lowest-cost platinum producer in South Africa. And we recently appointed Errol Drake as Engineering manager, who has got substantial experience not only in South Africa but also in Africa. And he has been Gold Fields, so he was a known entity and came highly recommended. Between the three of them they are running the core mining and processing functions and the maintenance of all the assets. And they are very ably supported by the rest of the team here. 19
As Nick said, I must talk a little bit about my observations. For me this is more a casual conversation than a formal presentation. I suppose the potential of the business is defined by the asset that you are dealing with. As Nick said, this is a world-class gold deposit. It must be one of the biggest deposits out there. It is a massive ore body that lends itself to mechanised mining, which if you get it right is safer and it supports a lower cost regime in spite of the 3km depth. And with a grade above 5g/ton I think if you are able to achieve operational excellence there are significant rewards for investors and shareholders in the ore body. It is not only the ore body itself but also the work that has been done on the ore body to develop our understanding and confidence. South Deep has got a fantastic handle on the ore body in terms of the structure and in terms of the grade that enables detailed planning, design and scheduling. From my view as far as the ore body and its modelling and understanding is concerned, that s a definite strength of the operation. 20
From the ore body I start moving into the mining methods. Generally I think the mining methods that we deploy, which consist of development, drifting, benching and long hole stoping - none of them are novel mining methods. They are applied in many parts of the world very successfully. The technology to support those mining methods is well developed and pervasive across the world. So there is nothing about the mining methods per se that concerned me, other than one thing. And that has got to do with our de-stress cut design, which I think was not good. The reason why I say this is that we are taking a 2m cut which requires support of up to 4m long. If you ve got a 4m bolt or anchor that you have to install in a 2.5m cut it doesn t support mechanised support installation. The consequence is that all of the support on our de-stress cut is being done by semi-handheld methods. As a result what has transpired is that our support has got two stages to it. It has got primary support, which really involves bolting and wire mesh. And then there is a secondary stage of support which involves long anchors and Oslo straps. But because of the installation method we have separated the primary and secondary support installations. So we do the primary support as part of the ongoing mining operations, and then the idea was to follow with the secondary support 30m behind the face. But as a consequence of the handheld methods of support installation we have found it very difficult to sustain the rate of support installation on secondary support, and that has fallen behind schedule. Gold Fields was incredibly brave in 2014 to stop the mine for four months to catch up with some of the support. And of course that has had an implication on the flexibility because the development and everything was stopped. From a mine design point of view that is probably the biggest weakness that we have. Nick and I have discussed it and Adriaan and the team are fully aware of it. What I am encouraged about is that my observation is not novel. It was recognised by the South Deep team. And it is not like they ve been doing nothing about that. There are three interventions that are being pursued at the moment. The one is what we refer to as our one pass support installation method, which involves a bolt that contains an anchor, which enables the installation of primary and secondary support simultaneously. It will increase the duration of the support installation but at least once it is done, it is done. You don t have to come back and install secondary support installation. 21
The reason why I m mentioning this is that if the secondary support installation is not installed at the right time it promotes more rapid deformation of the hanging wall. We ve got the regional layout which is based on the crush pillar layout. We have designed excavations to deform and to close over time. But in the absence of the secondary support that rate of deformation is accelerated. And that creates challenges when we have to open up the de-stress horizon to accommodate the mechanised mining equipment. We are at an advanced stage of the investigation of the one pass support system. And my understanding is that within the next few months we will have an answer on if we can implement a successful support methodology that will mitigate this issue. Even if we find that solution, it is still a hand-held solution. I am more excited about the two other solutions that are being pursued. The way we are doing our de-stress is we are creating this 2.5m cut which then provides an open area which de-stresses the area above and below it. We are also using the de-stress horizon to accommodate the equipment that we use to do the long hole drilling for the long hole open stopes. But they don t fit into a 2m excavation, so you have to open up the existing de-stress cut to fit these equipment units in. So one of the pilot projects that we are in the process of initiating at the moment is to increase the excavation height in the de-stress cut from 2.5m to 4.5m. So we will have 4.5m by 4.5m drives. That will enable us to do it once-of, install all the support and do that with a mechanised method. And then we will have the support up to date and there is no secondary support installation process subsequently. And then there is another very novel approach, which I haven t actually myself seen anywhere in the world, but it is a very novel one. It is called the incline slot. I think Gold Fields has spoken about it before. It is something that I will definitely study in a lot more detail. But if that is proved to be successful it would actually obviate the need for any support installation. But it will take us longer to prove that methodology up - in my opinion it is the more high-risk of the two alternatives being pursued. But if anything, that provides potential upside into the future. The next few slides will talk a little bit about the mining methods. Manie Keyser is our Mineral Resource Manager. He is going to go through a presentation showing the mining methods. Before he does that I want to point out two things. If I look at our different mining methods, the drift and bench and the de-stress, the majority of the production from South Deep is going to come from long hole stoping, which is a far more efficient mining method than the benching and the drifting because the volume blasted is an order of magnitude more than for benching and drifting. At the moment, given the current setup of the mine, only 35% of our production comes from long hole open stoping. Over the next number of years you will see, as the maturity of the operation increases we will see that the long hole open stoping, which is highlighted in light blue, increase its contribution to the overall reef production at South Deep. That will do two things. It will reduce the cost because it is a more cost-efficient method. And also the regions in the mine are generally of a higher grade, which that will create a lot more stability in our operation, predictability and cost efficiency I m going to hand over to Manie to run through a few slides to show us the mining methods. 22
Morning everyone. The next few slides really are an attempt to explain the mining method in simple terms from a few conceptual designs, where there are two different areas of the mine. The current mine basically is where the bulk of the de-stress has been done, almost 96%. We employ drift and bench mining in areas where the mining target is less than 15m. Typical mining will be either through drifting, where you are advancing the area like a normal development end. The second one is, if the thickness is higher than the 5m that this mining method extracts, you will do a bench as a second operation and extract the tonnage that way. A bench will give you typically 670 tonnes per blast. So in the current mine, the bulk of the mining currently happens that way. In areas that are thicker than 15m we do a long hole stope mining approach. The red that you see there is the beginning of a stope, where we will mine retreat mining backwards. It is a no entry zone at that point in time after the first blast, and remote loading from a cleaning point of view is employed to clean the stope out. 23
These long hole stopes give you 4,500 tonnes per blast if you do five rings as per the design here. And the typical lens can go up to 60m. These long hole stoping areas are also the higher grade areas of the mine where you extract quite good grades out of the ore body. 24
Then the second part of the mine - where we re going into the new mine with the horizontal de-stress 25
For simplicity we made the reef package of 16 units in this diagram - just one big, thick reef unit with the reef in the middle and waste on either side. And this is at a depth of 2.7km. So at first what we will do is we will mine as per a normal South African mine. There is the shaft. You will have your development going towards the ore body. At that point where you enter the ore body you reduce your mining excavation to the 2.5m de-stress cut as Nick has alluded to. 26
As you continue your de-stress in the Christmas tree fashion in between your original dip stability pillars, you start opening up the area with the ripping to allow the bigger machines to come in. 27
So if you put that design into the ore body you will enter the ore body at the base of the package. 28
You will continue doing horizontal cut with the de-stress going down dip. 29
The second cut comes into play 70m below that first cut to access this portion of the ground. 30
The ripping has basically followed the process so that an area gets opened up and you can start doing long hole stoping at the back because the area has been opened up to allow for large machines. 31
If we look at a typical mining sequence in the de-stress, as we said you go in 5m wide and 2.5m high 32
. 33
Once you start with the ripping to allow for the big machines you rip this excavation to 5.5m and redo all the support inclusive of the secondary support to allow that mining area to be conducive to long hole stope mining. 34
That is just a typical continuation up to where the de-stress cut is complete. And important to note at this point in time is that all these SADs stope access drives are entry points for long hole stoping. 35
The importance of de-stress is really to de-stress the ground at depth. And we reduce the stress from 80 MPa to between 35-40 MPa - that really mimics a shallow mine mining operation of about 1,200m below surface although we are 2,700m below surface. So the green that you see here is really just the angle that the de-stress de-stresses the ground above and below the de-stress cut. And typically that is the amount of long hole stoping that that green envelope has made available to us in any specific cut. 36
In a de-stress mining cut every ton of de-stress that you mine makes 7 tonnes of targeted reserves open. Also it gives you 155 kilo ounces of long hole stope reserves. We will go into the sequencing just now. 37
So as we progress through the down dip into the ore body with the horizontal de-stress cut, you can see that the various cuts have these various envelopes surrounding the cut. That enables the whole mining cut to be extracted with long hole stoping, and, if the target is a bit thinner, with drift and benching. 38
So as the third cut team comes into play going deeper into the ore body, we start mining long hole stoping on the first cut. In the grey that long hole stope has been mined and the red is where we are currently mining a long hole stope, as an example. You will also see there is a gap between the two. We call these the first phase of mining. We are mining the primary long hole stoping from where a second portion will be subtracted once the open stopes are backfilled. 39
So, as the de-stress continues, you will start backfilling the stopes that have been cleaned out, properly scanned - we know what we have taken out of those stopes. They will be backfilled and we will continue with this cut. Simultaneously we are already in the second cut at this point in time. The third cut is continuing deeper into the ore body. 40
Just from a development point of view; to understand how you get to the various cuts as you go deeper, you will have a spiral ramp going down at 17m intervals into the ore body where you then start your various mining cuts or the de-stress cuts. 41
So just to put it into the ore body from that point of view. That infrastructure really sits underneath these de-stress cuts. A spiral will sit there for this one; for this one a spiral will sit there just underneath the one on top. 42
Here we can see quite an advanced stage of mining. It has been backfilled completely. We have allowed for the necessary curing time for the secondary mining to be able to be mined. And we can start extracting the secondary long hole stopes at that point in time as we are going deeper in the ore body with the primary mining in the various cuts. 43
This is just a continuation. And at steady state such a project running with the de-stress, with the ripping, with the long hole stoping, will produce 46,000 tonnes per month. 44
Thank you Manie. Nice and simple at 3km depth. There is probably a reason why I asked Manie to explain this. These are very nice pictures. When you have a look at these drawings it looks fantastic. It is all sharp and clear. When you are underground it looks a bit different. Underground it looks like a mine. In terms of my observations underground, I don t think the conditions underground have generally been that great. We ve had issues with water management. The roadways, as a consequence, have been affected. Nick spoke about the backlog support. We stopped the mine for four months last year. There is still backlog support that we have to catch up on. The conditions in the workshops generally have not been fantastic. So these are management issues, leadership issues. I think if you want to run an efficient mechanised mining operation you need to have a working environment that supports that. So fortunately I think these issues can be addressed, and that will be one of the first tasks of the new combined management team to make sure that we set out working conditions that are supportive of a low-cost, efficient mining operation. If it is not like that the machines don t last, they break down, you start moaning about availability, productivity reduces and you are unable to meet your ramp-up forecast. So we believe that we are in a very strong position having done these things before to address those shortfalls at South Deep. So Nick spoke about the infrastructure. One of the things that I would look at when I join a new operation is if they have the infrastructure to support the production ramp-up. I m not going to talk a lot about it other than to say I think the infrastructure that has been installed by South Deep is generally of a high standard. And I am very confident that it will support the planned full production of 330,000 tonnes per month, other than one or two items. At the moment the horizontal ore handling capacity we have installed capacity of 220,000 tonnes a month. In order to elevate that to 330,000 tonnes per month there are two conveyer belt levels that we have to install and four crushers. That is well known. It is not required at the moment. We have therefore deferred the capital installation. We have reduced the planned capital expenditure at South Deep to match the progress that we have achieved with our ramp-up. So where installations are not required for the next year or two we have deferred the expenditure in order to drive towards a cash neutral or a positive cash position as quickly as possible. But we are not doing that to the 45
detriment of our ramp-up ambitions. So we have provided in 2015 for capital expenditure of R165 million for new mine development - R150 million of that is associated with the actual development and R15 million with the associated capital infrastructure installation. And as infrastructure is required it will be scheduled - over the next number of years the remaining R1.2 billion in 2009 terms, or R1.7 billion in today s terms, will be cash flowed to make sure it supports our continued growth. A lot of our shortfalls in meeting production forecasts have been attributed to the availability of equipment. When I look at what the Australian team implemented during 2014 I believe they were on absolutely the right path. There was congestion. I think the fleet size and the units that have been selected are well suited to the current volume of operations at South Deep. And we have made a provision of R85 million for fleet replacement during the course of this year as well as the purchase of additional fleet. And our ambition is to continue matching our fleet selection that is the type of units plus the number of them to the planned production profile. 46
When we decongested the mine in 2014 the idea was to reduce the fleet, but increase the productivity. From the graphs on the right-hand side it is clear that we have not entirely achieved that ambition in all areas. If I look at the productivity of drill rigs for example, it has declined from 81m per rig per month in 2011 to 58m per rig in 2014. Now, just to give you an indication of what world-class standards is, in Australia they will typically get between 250m and 300m per rig per month. I m not aware that that is achieved anywhere in South Africa, but targets between 100m and 130m are not uncommon in the South African industry. So I think there are possibly low hanging fruits if we can sort out our underground working environment and the operating and maintenance skills. I cannot see why we would have to stay at 58m per rig per month. So I think that is something we will be able to improve on. Just so that you understand, the guidance that we gave yesterday actually includes no efficiency improvements. We have just taken the efficiencies that we achieved in 2014, have extrapolated them into 2015 and wrapped that around the current mining configuration to come to the 7.1 tonnes of gold that we have guided for 2015. I m saying that because it gives us a high confidence in our ability to match the guidance. As far as the fleet is concerned, it is not only the number of units and the fleet selection. There are other critical factors that affect the ability of the equipment and the mining teams that use the equipment to perform to standard. I think we ve got a number of issues that we need to resolve. I don t think we have set this mine up properly. I think the condition of the underground workshops is not great. Our compliance to planned maintenance requirements is at 40%. That is just not right. We need to have 100% compliance to planned maintenance. I touched on the fact that we reduced labour. So there was a voluntary separation process that was implemented in 2014. Through that process we also lost a number of core skills unfortunately. That has impacted on our ability to maintain equipment. So as far as the fleet management is concerned I think our systems at this stage are probably poorly developed. That is why Errol Drake is part of our business. His responsibility is to assist us to improve all these systems. And I do think it is possible to make significant progress even during this year in those areas. 47
I will touch on the next few slides very briefly. I started off earlier referring to the importance of continuity and the sustainability of operations. There are a number of key areas that I generally would look at to develop comfort with our ability to sustain operations. They generally revolve around your safety performance. You have seen in the industry, if you injure people you will stop, either through your own doing as we did in 2014 by stopping the mine for support, or the DMR will stop you with their Section 54 safety stoppages. The other two areas are social and environmental which I will touch on in a second. I have been very encouraged with the long-term safety performance trend at South Deep since 2008. In 2008 the mine abandoned all forms of conventional operations. The VCR was stopped and the destress, which used to be done conventionally, was changed to a mechanised method. That contributed to the significant increase from 2008 to 2009. But even since then there has been a continual improvement in safety performance, which bodes well for the continuity of operations at South Deep. So safety will remain our number one priority. We want to make sure that every employee returns every day safely to his home after his day s work. 48
Our social license to operate is critically important. This fosters support from employees, local communities and local authorities. I have been very impressed with the performance of Gold Fields, particularly in recent times. Here are some pictures of projects that were concluded in 2014. I am very happy to reaffirm Nick s statement of yesterday that South Deep - at the end of 2014 - was in full compliance with the Mining Charter as well as all its social and labour plan projects. The only areas where we had issues has got to do with ABET and mentorship. Those are two areas on the human resource development side where we have fallen short. Those are industry-wide issues. One of the problems I think we do have is communicating this to government and the local communities. Their appreciation of what South Deep has done is perhaps not known. And I think there is opportunity for us to generate their support via improved communication. 49
On the environmental front - Ulrich and his team have done outstanding work particularly as far as the water management projects are concerned. We are in the process of constructing storm water drains to separate dirty mine water from fresh rain water. That project is well advanced. One of the most encouraging signs from that project is that during the heavy rains at present we ve had not a single environmental spillage due to excess storm water control. So that is looking up. Also I am particularly pleased with the expansion in capacity to re-use water through our reverse osmosis plant, which will increase water treatment from 3 mega litres per day to 5 mega litres per day. And that will reduce our reliance on the Rand Water supply and also reduce costs. I think that will assist not only the mine but also general consumption of fresh water in the area. Similarly, the management of pollution mitigation from of mining, outstanding work has been done. When I look at South Deep and the ability to perform over the next number of years I think all three of the key areas that affect sustainability are very well managed and I don t think that they represent a major risk as far as the mine is concerned. 50
So it is well documented that we have not matched our historic commitments and aspirations. This is the 2014 guidance that was given in February. If we look at the achievement in 2014 - and of course there are a number of once-off events that have given cause to the significant deviation from the guidance that was given in February. The fact is, however, it is not only those once-off events that are impacting our ability to perform. There are a number of issues that remain part of the business that make it difficult for South Deep to match the growth aspirations. It is on this basis that we have decided that we need to come back and fix the base. And we need to be clear with our shareholders and our investors that we are going to reduce cash flows by not pursuing growth before we have demonstrated to ourselves the ability that we can manage the mine confidently. So our focus will be aimed at fixing the base, fixing the way we are managing the current operations and that way develop confidence for further expansion. 51
So when I look at South Deep my assessment is that its inherent value is in tact. We ve got a quality ore body. We have great infrastructure that has been installed, proven mining methods and a very strong position on the social and environmental side. In addition to that, the constraints are not unknown. What we need to do is develop the capacity to execute and to remediate those things. The areas that we are focusing on are to make sure we ve got the right leadership team. We will then install the right management processes, the right management systems. I think a key issue is the design, particularly the de-stress cut and the support installation, which technically I think is a key constraint. And we have to develop excellence in many operating activities at South Deep. Because of this the long-term roll-out target that we ve gave in 2014 may take longer to achieve. I think we are going to take the best part of this year to develop most of these dimensions. We will then use the information gained during the year to re-base the long-term growth of the operation. 52
So this may be a little bit of a repeat - the way forward is firstly not to pursue growth for the sake of pursuing growth, because that is a costly exercise. We are going to focus on creating the right working methodology at South Deep. During that time we are not going to over-invest for instance in infrastructure that is only required multiple years from now. We will contain our cash outflows to the minimum that is required, but in such a way that it does not compromise our long-term growth aspirations. We will start with the leadership and organisational design, which we have done plus appoint the senior team. What we will do next is start penetrating deeper into the organisation to make sure that the core strength is developed not only at senior level but throughout the organisation, particularly in the core areas of mining and engineering. Then there are a number of big project areas that we need to focus on. I have just listed some of them. I ve mentioned the support installation and water management. For each of these items we need a very systematic plan which we will draft, have agreed timelines and make sure that we address each of them in the shortest possible time. So in addition to the areas that we will develop strategies for, we will at the same time systematically work on general work practises, organisational discipline and performance management. There are consequences for good performance and poor performance. They are known. Let s not be shy about them. So we will have the projects and general operational excellence that we will pursue. And I believe this will set us on a course to correct the base. But it will set us on a course as well to start growing the business towards the 700,000 ounces or whatever targets will generate from our re-basing in 2015. I don t think it is impossible. I think the value is inherently here. It may take a little bit longer, but I think with the team we have selected and that we will appoint in future, and with the strategies I have outlined I think we will ultimately achieve our goals. On that note it is the end of our formal presentation and if there are any questions we are happy to take them. 53
Patrick Mann Deutsche Bank I just wanted to ask on the timelines. There is obviously a lot to do to re-base the operation, as you said. You are going through it systematically. But you said it is not going to take longer than the remainder of this calendar year to re-base the operation and set a timeline on growth? Is 2015 enough to re-base the operation given the kind of core things that you want to focus on? There are a fair number of activities to get through there. Nico Muller I think we are probably going to make improvements in terms of our production this year. I think we are probably going to be a bit cautious about taking those assumptions and automatically putting them into another ambitious forecast that we communicate with everyone. I think it is important for us going forward to develop credibility, just amongst ourselves to start off with, and with our shareholders and investors. I think by the end of this year we will probably have a better idea. But I think we will probably give ourselves into 2016 before we start making any new, elevated promises which we cannot achieve. Andrew Byrne Barclays I think most of us were pretty surprised yesterday with the 2015 guidance. It is a lot lower than most of us had expected. Just really on the potential of how it may develop as we move through the year. You said you based 2015 on what you achieved in 2014. And that was obviously a lot of stop-start with the four months outage. If you were to achieve the 2013 productivity of 65m per rig rather than the 24m at the end of 2015, would that correlate to a 10% increase in that production? Nico Muller If we achieved the 2013 productivity levels of course the guidance would have been different. Andrew Byrne 54