By Allan Seccombe
Business Day (South Africa)
Using technological advances in machinery, AngloGold Ashanti could unlock 6-million ounces of gold that is currently locked up in areas that are deemed to be unsafe to mine or in thin reefs that are uneconomic to extract.
AngloGold is at the forefront of driving technological advances to extract gold safely and, it hopes, cheaply from its deep-level mines in South Africa, where costs have ballooned and cut heavily into profits in recent years.
The technology is basically a boring machine, specially reduced in size, to punch out gold-bearing reefs from sterilised parts of the mine. A simple analogy would be using a pen to poke the ham out of a ham sandwich, and leaving the bread untouched.