Harmony Gold’s net profit for the six months to December 2021 fell 69% to R1.4-billion, the company said, despite a 4% rise in production. The company declared an interim dividend of 40 cents per share, less than half of the 110 cents per share it paid out this time last year.
“This was due to a lower gold price received and the higher all-in sustaining cost as a result of safety-related stoppages at some of our South African mines, and geotechnical issues and unplanned labour stoppages at some of our larger underground mines in South Africa and at Hidden Valley in Papua New Guinea,” Harmony said.
It has been a while since South African mining companies flagged the “safety-related stoppages” imposed by the regulator, the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy , as a reason for a fall in earnings. But Harmony, like other South African mining companies, had a worrying regression on the safety front last year.
In the six months under review, seven Harmony employees were killed on the job at the company’s mines, compared with six in the same period in 2020. For the sector as a whole, the numbers were worse: as of mid-December, 72 mine workers had been killed at work in South Africa in 2021 compared with 52 in 2020. This has led to the DMRE taking a more interventionist approach in the halting of operations for