South Deep, the mechanised Gold Fields gold mine in western Gauteng, is putting remote loading to the test. “We’re trialling remote loading from surface, where we have a person sitting in the control room that’s operating a loader 3 km under the ground beneath him. It’s very exciting to see that kind of technology being rolled out,” Gold Fields CEO Nick Holland said in response to Mining Weekly’s question on the strategy Gold Fields was adopting to bring South Deep up to speed with the company’s mechanised mines Australia, Ghana and Peru.
