Sibanye's Stillwater mine, in Montana
To further proactively manage the Covid-19 threat at NYSE- and JSE-listed Sibanye-Stillwater’s platinum group metal (PGM) operations in the US, the company has decided to reduce the number of people working at some of its sites.
The company will take specific actions including demobilising contractors involved in growth capital activities, facilitating remote work for personnel that are not required on site, prohibiting face-to-face contact with external parties and restricting site access to employees.
“Sibanye’s Blitz project accounts for the majority of contract workers at the US PGM operations and these decisions are likely to temporarily impact on growth from Blitz in 2020 and delay the project’s development schedule.
“In addition, we have received a force majeure notice from the manufacturer of the mills to be used in the expansion of the concentrator. Further detail will be provided once we have concluded a full impact assessment,” the company stated in a release on Monday.
Sibanye is also working to ensure that these short-term disruptions do not impact longer-term business plans, while ensuring it is well-positioned to safely and efficiently ramp up operations in a timely manner once the worst of the global Covid-19 pandemic passes.
“As the only primary PGMs producer in the US, we will endeavour to maintain current production from our Stillwater and East Boulder mines, while maintaining throughput through our Columbus Metallurgical Complex, to provide PGMs to the critical sectors that use them.
“Aside from the Blitz project activities, our other operations are largely unaffected by the aforementioned decisions,” the company said.
Sibanye owns and operates PGM mines in the US and South Africa and gold mining operations in South Africa.