JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed gold and copper mining company Harmony is very optimistic about adding additional surface gold production from its surface retreatment operation options in the Free State and on the West Wits.

In flagging these organic options during its latest presentation of excellent financial results, Harmony CEO Beyers Nel expressed the belief that, on a conceptual level, the Free State and West Wits surface options could add about 100 000 oz of annual long-term, low-cost, high-margin production to Harmony, whose surface retreatment assets contributed 7 t of gold at a solid 46% margin in the 12 months to June 30.

To add more surface ounces, new tailings storage facilitation has to be constructed, similar to what Harmony has at Karreerand, the location of Mine Waste Solutions’ mega surface retreatment operation.

“It's a process of working through regulatory approvals, doing the capital estimates correctly, and making sure that these projects, which are hydro-mining operations, have adequate water supply, for example,” Nel pointed out to Mining Weekly in a one-on-one interview. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)

Being worked on are options to ensure that it has enough water to mine without interruption the water-scarce Free State, where Harmony has 5.7-million ounces on surface. Once feasibility studies, now being concluded, have been determined, those outcomes will be disclosed to the market.

UNDERGROUND EXPERTISE

Harmony, which produces 1.4-million to 1.5-million ounces of gold a year, is particularly good at extending the life-of-mine of underground operations. It does so by injecting new life into undercapitalised assets, or short-life assets, or strategic-exit assets, though capital infrastructure redevelopment.

These organic mine life extensions in which Harmony excels are relatively low-cost resource-to-reserve conversion opportunities when compared with inorganic opportunities, “so we continue to extend mine life, and we’ll probably continue to do so for many years to come”, said Nel.

Mining Weekly: When it comes to copper, Harmony seems to be moving quite steadily in new terrain in Australia.

Nel: We're very excited about our copper prospects. What we do say is that gold is Harmony's foundation, our cornerstone, who we are, and that copper is a growth lever for us. We've got two copper operations at the moment. We’re building a mine called the Eva copper mine, that will be in contrast to the mine we own. Eva is an openpit bulk mine, slightly lower grade but a big volume openpit mine, which is under construction. Then, we've also got the CSA copper mine, which is a deep underground copper mine but very high grade. We do believe the two dovetail. CSA has a clear pathway to 40 000 copper tons per annum level and Eva will be 60 000 t of copper per annum. That is a pathway for Harmony to be at 100 000 t of copper per annum within about three years from today. Most importantly, that excludes the copper we'll be getting from the Wafi-Golpu Tier 1 copper/gold project, which on a standalone 100% basis, will produce 180 000 t of copper per annum, with more than 200 000 oz of gold, and that’s a mine that we own 50:50 with our JV partner, Newmont.

Minerals Council South Africa has been saying South African mining is falling behind other mining jurisdictions on the modernisation front.

Let me first acknowledge the work that the Minerals Council is doing. The Minerals Council is doing phenomenal work for the mining industry in South Africa and Harmony is a key contributor to that work and an active participant. I do think some of the modernisation lags are a little bit structural. We do mine these deep underground orebodies. It is slightly easier to modernise surface production where you've got access to things like GPS and satellites, et cetera, but I do think there are strides being made on the implementation of technology and modernisation, like the use of AI, even in the underground mining applications. There's a lot happening in that space. I do think we've only started, and I do think the learning curve and also the adoption of technology and modernisation, even in the underground mining areas of the South African mining industry, will dramatically take-off from here on forward. So, lots of opportunity there.

ELEVENTH CONSECUTIVE YEAR

Harmony has met its production guidance for the eleventh consecutive year. In financial year 2026, its operating free cash flow rose 54% to a record R17 148-million on higher average gold price received and copper sales from the CSA mine, following the acquisition of MAC Copper. This enabled Harmony to declare a record final dividend of R4.8-billion, lifting the full-year dividend to R8.2-billion, a yield of some 3.5%.

Importantly, this was achieved while continuing to invest in reserve conversion, life extension, and future growth.