Crown

The world’s largest surface re-treatment facility, Crown recovers and treats old slime and sand dumps to the south of Johannesburg’s CBD. Most of these dumps hold waste from the stamp milling era of ore processing when plants treated the sand and slimes separately compared with current milling which reduces all ore to slimes before the extraction of gold.

Enlarge Crown reserves and resources map

The dumps are reclaimed and mixed with water so that they can be pumped to one of Crown’s three plants – Crown Mines, City Deep and Knights – where modern milling and carbon-in-pulp (CIP) technology is used to recover much of the gold remaining in them. These plants have the capacity to treat 11.76 million tonnes of sand and tailings per year. In the process land is freed up for redevelopment, mostly for light industrial activities. In the 2008 financial year, Crown produced to 87 354 ounces of gold.

Growth projects

A mining right for the landmark Top Star mine to the south of the Johannesburg CBD was granted by the Department of Minerals and Energy during August 2008 and recovery of material, to be treated initially through the Crown plant, is expected to begin during the second quarter of FY09. Top Star is estimated to contain 5.2 million tonnes of material, and to contain 128 000 ounces of gold at an estimated 0.775g/t, enough to sustain operations for 20 months.

In June 2007, Crown started to reclaim the 3/L/2 slimes dam, containing 7.64 million tonnes, to recover some 115 000 ounces of gold over a two-year period.

At the end of the 2008 financial year, Crown employed 1 179 people, including contractors.

Crown key statistics

		12 months to 30 Jun 2008	12 months to 30 Jun 2007
Ore milled	t’000	8  235	8 405
Yield	g/t	0.33	0.38
Gold produced	oz	87 354	103 011
	kg	2 717	3 204
Cash operating costs	US$ per oz	553	450
	ZAR per kg	129 908	104 442
	ZAR per tonne	43	40
Cash operating profit	US$ million	24.0	19.1
	ZAR million	175.7	138.2
Capital expenditure (net)	US$ million	5.8	4.2
	ZAR million	42.1	30.0