Wayne Swanepoel, DRDGOLD senior manager: human and social capital, adds: “Ergo Mining is committed to meaningful social investment in our local and host communities. We recognise the importance of empowering the communities around our mining operations with essential fourth industrial revolution skills to enable their participation in and benefit from future business opportunities.”

The training and business incubation programme is planned for two areas within Ekurhuleni – Duduza and Tsakane – and in Soweto and will focus on equipping 50 youth with skills in the areas of mobile device repairs, data annotation and graphic design. The training courses will run between six and nine months, starting in October.

The presentation of DRDGOLD CEO Niël Pretorius at the thirty-sixth annual Gold Forum Americas 2024 in Colorado Springs highlighted the company’s world-leading gold-from-tailings advances that restore the environment, uplift communities and pay consistent dividends to shareholders.

DRDGOLD is creating self-sustaining livelihoods in urban agriculture and entrepreneurship through the development of the Ergo Riverlea Livelihoods programme, which forms part of Ergo’s social and labour plan and the larger Sustainable Livelihoods initiative. The programme was established in response to a request from the Federation for a Sustainable Environment and the Riverlea Mining Forum for DRDGOLD to create economic opportunities for the people of Riverlea and the Zamimpilo informal settlement.

As it becomes increasingly imperative for mines to ensure responsible closure, gold recycling company DRDGOLD Niël Pretorius has said it is important for mining companies to implement realistic environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives that will not backfire later when goals cannot be met.

DRDGold signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in March this year with Copper 360 to carry out a due diligence on the company’s copper tailings dams which Copper 360 estimates contain some 50m to 60m tons of material with grades varying between 0.18% to 1.5% copper.

The company was now pivoting on a “tight capital reinvestment programme” as it sets up “infrastructure to boost capacity to produce 6 tonnes of gold, which is a tonne more” to what it produced this year.

DRD Gold het vandag winssyfers vir sy boekjaar tot einde Junie bekend gemaak. Die omset was 14% hoër, goudproduksie was egter 5% laer, en die wesensverdienste klim met 4%. Die uitvoerende hoof, Niel Pretorius gesels oor die resultate.

DRDGold, a leading gold company based in South Africa, has announced a significant capital investment of over R7 billion in expanding its operations over the next three years. The company's CEO, Niël Pretorius, discussed the reasons behind this decision in a recent interview with CNBC Africa. Despite the current record gold price, DRDGold is focusing on building a sustainable future for the business by investing in new infrastructure and increasing production capacity.

The PV facility at Ergo generated 13 113 650 kWh of energy during the 12 months to July 30, amounting to 10% of consumption. Connection to the Eskom grid has opened the way for the wheeling of excess energy generated at Ergo into the national grid.