Harmony Gold takes over Newcrest stake in Hidden Valley mine

Harmony Gold, the South African gold-mining and exploration company, has announced that the company will own 100 percent of the Hidden Valley mine in Papau New Guinea. This comes after Australian gold producer, Newcrest, has agreed to sell its half of the Hidden Valley Joint Venture.

Harmony will now assume all liabilities and expenses related to the JV and mine, including rehabilitation costs and remediation obligations.

The operation was owned by the Hidden Valley Joint Venture (HVJV), one of three unincorporated joint ventures between subsidiaries of Newcrest (50 per cent) and Harmony Gold Mining Company Limited of South Africa (50 per cent).

So, with Harmony assuming full responsibility for the Hidden Valley mine, heres what we learned from the Hidden Valley mine “fact sheet”:

• Hidden Valley is located in the highly prospective Morobe province in Papua New Guinea
• It sits within the New Guinea Mobile Belt of Papua New Guinea which is one of the world’s pre-eminent geological terrains for porphyry copper-gold and epithermal gold mineralisation
• It is an open pit gold and silver mine, consisting of Hidden Valley, Kaveroi and Hamata
• Gold and silver doré produced at Hidden Valley is transported to Perth Mint in Australia, where it is refined
• Construction of the mine began in 2007. The first gold was poured in 2009, while commercial production commenced in September 2010
• In the last financial year, ending 30 June 2016, 145,132 ounces of gold was produced at Hidden Valley
• Tailings from the processing plant are treated and stored in a purpose built engineered tailings storage facility. This is the first of its kind in PNG.
• Around 40 percent of Hidden Valley’s process plant water needs are met by recycling treated surface water are met from a purpose built tailings storage facility – this reduces the amount of water required from local raw water sources

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