JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Johannesburg- and New York-listed DRDGOLD on Wednesday outlined its plans to invest around R7.8-billion in its Big Five capital growth projects, two on the well-established East Rand and three on the fast developing Far West Rand.

The R7.8-billion capital investment is described as being a medium-term forecast for the key projects within the Vision 2028 strategy, extending life-of-mine by at least 20 years for both East Rand and West Rand operations.

Vision 2028 is working towards increasing throughput to three-million tons a month, boosting gold production to more than 200 000 oz/y, reducing the company’s environmental footprint and maximising social impact. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)

The plan now for Ergo on the East Rand is to expand the operation’s lifespan to beyond 2040 to process a resource base previously thought non-viable. Increasing deposition capacity, however, would be vital until this could be achieved, by resuming deposition on to the Daggafontein tailings storage facility (TSF) by the first quarter of the 2027 financial year.

Ergo’s throughput is being throttled at 1.65-million tons a month to ease deposition on the current Brakpan TSF. Longer term, the planned new Withok TSF would take over from the Brakpan TSF.

At the Far West Gold Recoveries operation, near Carletonville, the story is similar – for now – to that of Ergo.

The throughput rate at Far West Gold Recoveries Phase 1 has, from inception, been determined by the capacity of its TSF, Driefontein 4 Dam.

Phase 2 construction is now well under way, with the expansion of the current DP2 plant to double its current throughput capacity to 1.2-million tons, enabled by constructing the large new Regional TSF.

The Regional TSF, with a 30-year life, is designed for 800-million tons at an eventual deposition rate of 2.4-million tons a month for the life-of-mine (LoM). It will still be in construction when its lower section begins to be used from the southern side.

“I think I’ll venture to say that this is possibly the largest tailings dam constructed on a liner, definitely in South Africa, maybe even in the southern hemisphere. I don’t know of another tailings dam that’s this big,” DRDGOLD COO Jaco Schoeman commented during the results presentation covered by Mining Weekly.

In the case of Ergo, some of the existing infrastructure has to be upgraded for gold to be recovered from the Marievale and Crown major clusters with treated material making use of Daggafontein and Withok deposition capacity plus a dual 11 km pipeline, one for slurry and the other for return water.

Commencement of deposition onto Daggafontein is envisaged in the first quarter of DRDGOLD’s 2027 financial year.

Withok, which is directly south of the Brakpan tailings dam that is scheduled for closure, is designed to hold 310-million tons of material with a deposition rate of 1.3-million tons a month.

"Once this and Daggafontein are an operation, Ergo’s deposition capacity will return to 1.8-million tons a month deposition capacity, providing a LoM of more than 20 years. “We anticipate that it's going to take us approximately three years before we start commissioning,” Schoeman reported.

The 600 000 t capacity of Far West’s DP2 plant will be doubled to 1.2-million tons, which will be pumped to the Regional TSF, close to the town of Fochville. Shown during the presentation was the proposed carbon-in-leach (CIL) circuit. The 1.2-million tons of tailings will come from the Driefontein 3 and Lebanon tailings dams. The envisaged completion date for this is the first quarter of DRDGOLD’s 2027 financial year.

“From an engineering and design perspective, we’re 99% complete. Our procurement packages are 94% complete. Fabrication and supplies are 65% complete and construction is about 30% complete. Again, the timeline for commissioning is the first quarter of 2027,” Schoeman emphasised.

Shown was the second stream of the proposed CIL circuit, with tanks and infrastructure visible and a gold room in the background.