Impala Platinum (JSE: IMP; US-OTC: IMPUY) reported five worker deaths at its South African operations in the quarter to Sept. 30 despite lower overall injury rates.
Four fatal incidents occurred at Impala Rustenburg and one at Marula, compared with none across the group a year earlier, the company said in its quarterly update Thursday. Investigations are continuing. Impala Rustenburg lies about 100 km west of South Africa’s administrative capital, Pretoria, while Marula is roughly 240 km northeast of the city.
“We faced disappointing setbacks in our journey to zero harm in the quarter under review,” CEO Nico Muller said in the release. “Safe production is a non-negotiable and underpins both sustainable operations and value delivery.”
The safety setbacks are interrupting production at a group supplying about a fifth of the world’s primary platinum-group metals, according to Implats’ annual report for the year ended June 30. Implats acknowledged remnants of an “at-risk safety culture”. The deaths prompted shutdowns and safety reviews as Implats confronted a gap between improving injury rates and its ability to prevent fatal incidents.
The incidents last quarter involved rail equipment, sulphur dioxide exposure, winches and rigging, and falls of ground. A sulphur dioxide release at Rustenburg’s processing operations prompted precautionary medical referrals for more than 100 employees.
Shares closed 5.6% lower at 163.91 rand (C$13.78) in Johannesburg on Friday, after gaining 0.7% on Thursday, according to Sharenet data. The company has a market capitalization of about 148.2 billion rand (C$12.5 billion).
Safety reset
Rustenburg suspended mining from July 24 to 28 to reassess safety procedures following serious incidents. The program included workplace inspections, checks on critical safeguards and targeted training for locomotive operators and employees working with rail equipment.
“When our people return to work, they will do so with the assurance that all rail-bound equipment has been thoroughly re-assessed and re-verified,” Rustenburg CEO Moses Motlhageng said in the July statement.
The company also planned to appoint independent specialists to assess its safety systems and work with the supplier of locomotive collision-avoidance technology to improve its performance.
The latest quarterly death toll already exceeds the four fatalities Implats recorded during the entire financial year ended June 30. Its annual report identified verification of the safety reset’s effectiveness as work still to be completed during the current financial year.
Output falls
The July shutdown cost Rustenburg about 52,000 oz. of combined platinum-group metals and gold production, while a fatality at its processing operations disrupted August smelting.
Group refined and saleable production fell 8% to 763,000 oz. across platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium and gold. Implats maintained its forecast for refined and saleable production of 3.3 million to 3.5 million oz. of platinum-group metals and gold combined for the year ending June 2027.
It expects stock-adjusted unit costs of 25,250 to 26,250 rand per oz. and capital spending of 9 billion to 11 billion rand.
Source: www.northernminer.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.
